Helenita's experimental diary
by Helenita
Summary: I, Helenita, am not versed in expressing my mind upon paper. This is an attempt of extracting a painful (but hopeful) period of my life into a diary. Please let this process heal my hurting heart? [A shy, awkward and academic coward gets thrown into the tempests of a ridiculous prophecy, and falls miserably in love with her new cold-hearted servant]
1. Chapter 1

_Here I'm set by the hearth of my home, with an uncertain quill in my trembling fingers; for these fingers are not versed in the placement of words, nor in knowing the secrets they hold - and unfold when placed aligning the rules of soul, as I've seen in stories the great masters of old once have told. But how should I, a mage or no, with these written markings conjure now to you the same tempests searing me deep within my chest? How can I, with mere blots of ink, here on paper birth a love or a loss? How could these phantasms [memories] of insoluble truth within me, with man-made symbols here on paper become enchained? And how will I ever know if our age-old agreement, that once without words was conceived to settle the symbol with sound, holds the same for me as it does for you? What common ground do we have in this guessing game, but yet another word to outweigh them all, expressing so boundless a truth it can never be captured in a medium or a mind- only experienced as it pierces our hearts._

 _I ask forgiveness, reader, if these black-inked tracks of thought are confusing. I haven't the skill to breathe these phantasms here upon this page and make them read themselves lightly like a summers breeze. But I will try my best to create with words the same whole the painter and the composer toil for years when alone; for today I know I have no other power but this: The power to share of bliss and woe, the power to, at least temporarily, gift life. To strengthen the little light that shines in the darkness. If there's but one peeping little heart out there, who even for a short little while may through these pages see that small light glimmering in the darkness, I will be content, knowing I've succeeded in my responsibility (our responsibility?) - To fill the void with light._

 _The travail that we sometimes call 'life', and which has now led me to this task of writing, began by that road that leads to the yellow autumn hills whereupon the town of Whiterun resides. As I write, I will try to remain within myself as I was, then and then, save some explanation here and there._

* * *

For starters, if what follows would seem odd, it must be said that among all natures sights, a tundra of hay and flowered leas is the only release for shackled souls whom only silence may heal – Have you ever been there, in that solitude so vast and complete that it sates all thirst for space in even the loneliest human hearts? In a silence so whole and replete that your withering dreams begin to seed and to bloom and to sing; and soon you hear your dreams in the wind, in that ceaseless whistling song that soils no silence, for it lives there as does the blood in your veins. For we were right there, in the middle of it all, me and my noble mare, Vienne. And there in the horizon was She, beautiful Whiterun atop her hills, with puffs of chimney smoke trailing about her thatched roofs. The sight of her battlements and fluttering pennants brought many sweet memories back. For you see, the town of the white mare was familiar to me from a decade past; Then had I, a young graduate mage, along with a group of arcane scholars spent there one summers week before continuing with our excursion to the college far in the north. I remember more than can here be listed; voices rich with laughter, scents filled with flowers and looks brimmed with youthful joy, and sometimes ache, for some had also laid curious and longing looks on a laughing young dame. Then had I thought the world and myself to be beautiful and good, and though a decade of loneliness had since proved me wrong, these memories evoke even now my deepest dimples. There's a certain good charm in the crackling sound of fireside flames and in the glinting calm of Nordsmens eyes, for they know of things you can't learn from books or scrolls.

Infatuated with my numerous memories, rocking slowly in the lulling trodding of Vienne, and hearing the gentle wind within the hay - Ah, like that I drifted asleep in the saddle before ever counting one and two, what with being so warm in my silken robes, and with the clap and clop of Viennes hooves striking the pebbles upon our road like lullaby bells. I would've woken up peacefully to her snorting at the gates of the town, and I'd have taken her to the stables and fed her well, and in the night lodged myself at the Bannered Mare; but none of this ever happened. An anomaly of mathematical improbability broke everything before that. This is how it all happened, and where my wretched tale really begins:

I flinched violently awake into a hard blast of freezing air; it was like a slap against the face, so hard and abrupt was the upcoming wind. Gray clouds amassed furiously up in the skies, thickening in the eye of some unseemly coming storm; everything happened so fast, too fast, almost instanteously - I'd barely had a breathe before a second and immensely powerful rush of wind roamed through the fields, squishing all the hay flat against the soil unlike I'd ever seen. When I took notice of Viennes furtive ears, startled by her frightened whinnies, it was already too late; she had completely lost her nerves, and charged off the curve of the road and right towards the town. She leapt so fiercely over the first boulder in our way that I fell from the saddle and rolled in the grass and dirt, gasping for air against the strenghtening wind. And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it all ceased. A dead quiet landed the plains, and I was alone now, knuckling my eyes and staring at the distancing rear of Vienne in disbelief.

Yet within only a few frightful heartbeats the heavens opened up with a mighty roar. Hard rays of golden sunlight flamed down on the tundras from a widening rift in that gargantuan mass of clouds. The light nearly blinded me, and from within the shining rays of sun there blazed into the world a bolt of golden fire in a thunderous din! A blinding sight of divine rights it was, yea, a flying bolt of brilliant flames shining with golden light, transforming into a living creature of fire upon spreading its blazing wings. It straightened its course, diving close to soil and right towards me, growing and growing with wrathful light, and the clouds up parting wider and wider, the wedge of sunlight driving shadows ahead like making way for their king, so that the winged deity basked in a glory of golden flames – all in me, all thought and blood was frozen in time as the bolt came towards me; faster than any arrow, faster than the wind, faster than lightning it stormed towards me and passed right over my head, the gust in the aftermath of its flight wrapping me in a tornado of dust and rattling air, pulling at my robes so fiercely they were about to tear apart. Breathless I stared at the creature plunging up towards the sky, the winds skittering in its wake like servants after their sovereign, and the sun dancing on its glimmering scales as on the waves of ocean. The creature emit a booming voice towards the skies, " **DOV.** "

There a 0,00% statistical probability flew in all its beauty, making a round around the entire tundra, displaying impossible grace in all motion; how! Striking its wings it blast the air with a bang, shooting away with unearthly speed, then steering in the wind with those membranes large as ships sails, caressed the torrents of air under its wing spread like a fan, and curved in a majestic arc back towards me, folding its wings and pressing them into its scaly sides that it became only an arrow, piercing the air so fiercely the whistling filled the scene, overcoming even the storm courting its flight. When it looked like it would shoot past me towards Whiterun, it suddenly took height and fully spread its wings, landing with strong limbs right in front of me, with a force that sent dirt into towering heights, and which shook the very ground beneath my feet.

You notice I'm eagerly describing the dragon, it's flight and beauty, leaving not a word for myself or the world surrounding us – You could wonder, weren't I scared out of my wits, wasn't I thinking about death, or escape, or anything at all? A sane person surely would have, and I myself wonder the same from the safety of my writing desk, but would I now write of anything else but the dragon would belie the purpose of this writing – Yes, then I had no self, I had nothing in me, no breath or thought but this creature.

The dust shrouded its entire stature from my sight, and with that veil between I was released from the spell – A weakness rushed through my body, and I collapsed onto the grass, my heart pounding in an attempt to make up all the lost pumps of blood. What could I then but stare at it and weep in pitiful fear? Perhaps prepare for death or who knows what? So I sat there on my butt, gasping for breath, afraid in the way you are in the shadow of a creature towering thirty feet over you and which is filled with an alien intellect (not the most common feeling, I know, but try thinking what insects feel about humans), staring with teary eyes at what could be my end, unable to even blink. And how it then presented itself sealed my breath: it stretched its entire length to a stout posture, all it's countless plated scales rattling like the metal of armies. It coiled its infinite tail around its legs, and straightened its neck as high above as possible to better catch the rays of sun, as if placing itself to be immortalized on a canvas; as if concerned whether a human – me- could think of it as something less than a regal of the clouds. Its enormous eyes were swirling with deep bronze colors, glimmering with a smile it's rigid jaw could not show me. It stood so, perfectly still, so still one would have thought it petrified were not the eyes alive with a mornings laughter as free and careless as the wind itself.

The tundra wind had settled down, now only softly rustling in the hay, lying in wait for the dragons flight. We remained so for a long, silent moment, it posing and me sitting (and quietly sniffing). After an eternity I had the courage to try my numb feet; I stood up, shaking, hardly breathing, knowing not what to do or say – how do you even talk to a dragon? What would you say? Without warning it reached its front claw towards me, at which I couldn't hold in a scared gasp, nor stop myself from peddling away from it, as useless as that was. But no, it merely laid its enormous claw on the ground in front of my feet. I stopped then, trembling so badly I had to take support from its finger with both my hands, afraid that if I crumbled down it would make a bad impression. It's skin was cold under my palm, like metal. The dragon parted its jaw, and began, unbelievably enough, speaking, and with what voice! Deep like the roots of a mountain, and thoughtful like an ancient scholar: " **BRIT MONAH, ZU'U LOS MIRMULNIR**."

My own peeping voice nearly died under its relentless (though surprisingly gentle) gaze, "Noble dragon, I don't understand your language…"

It lowered its visage atop its extended arm, so that its eyes were level with mine and only a few feet away, then remained silent again, looking into me with that same mysterious smile of infinite morning light (and joy). Beginning to feel feverish and like in a dream I reached my little hand towards its face, or rather watched myself do so - I had no control of motion or thought. Upon touch it again parted its jaw, " **Ven fen koraav hin zul, ahrk hi fen mindoraan mu.** "

And with that, it braced its body and leapt, membranes first slapping soil until the wind rushed to their aid; now the gusts of those wings embracing me, washing off all dirt on my robes and twirling impatiently all around me, gracing me with its cold touch like a divine hand, and then they parted; the dragon took speed and flew like thunder into the clouds, the storm following, and thus silence descended on the tundra. The sun remained. Other travelers that had been on the road were comings towards me. Even from the watchtower nearby some men (soldiers, it later turned out) were running towards me, shouting something incomprehensible to me. By the time they reached me I was only half conscious, dizzily giggling at their bewildered looks, my head utterly emptied; a feverish wave washed over my body, the concoction of pent emotion, build-up of fear, wonder, and immense relief. I fell on my knees, gasping, and the last thing I remember is panting on all fours, vomiting my guts out on the grass. And then, blackness.


	2. Chapter 2

_I remember now a thought I harbored in my mind around the time I was recovering (I cannot place where it first took place). Oh, I knew from ancient stories that whom dragons speak to has nothing good lined up for them. Even then, by Mara knows what forbidden premonition, I entertained the thought that some Gods had chosen such a ridiculous aspect as myself, simply to play out a divine (tragi)comedy. A breton lady of absolutely no heroic renown. A lady who is scared to death of other people, and who would probably forget about her divine duties and spend her days reading books as the world burned away. Reading books, until nothing else remained but a small cottage on a tiny tip of land, somewhere on the roots of Jerall mountains (preferably southern side, but that is not too important). Eventually I'd peek out from the door just to see some archetypical and absurd mythological devourer of worlds right in front of my nose, emptily staring at me, having conquerred the entire universe in my absence. And I'd only close the door and run back to my bed, weeping, and hoping for all of it to solve on it's own when I don't look._

 _In addition to feeling immense pity for this fictional-future-me, and an overwhelming desire to comfort her, I would snicker at these erratic thoughts and disregard them as a joke, confident for once in my life that things could not get worse, and that the diabolical dragon-nonsense meant nothing at all in regards to my person. "So much for a peaceful journey to Winterhold" - is what concerned me more at the time._

 _The irony certainly isn't lost on me._

* * *

It is most refreshing to wake up on a soft bed and find yourself alone in a small room that has its door closed. There was one window in the room, right above my bed; a beautiful sky-blue glass with a Kynareth bird. The sun made it so bright, filling the room with warmth. I couldn't help but smile at those rays cascading on my covers. How good it felt to be alive and safe. Little did I know that the following days were to become the single most significant days in my life, days which would bring through misfortunes ways one lasting ache; one pain I knew by name from springs long gone, but this time heavier, more ruthless than ever before, and yet all necessary – I know now I was born for this event, the single meaning in the clause that is my existence, though then I knew none of this, and had I known the grief that was to come I'd never have risen from that bed.

I recall the creaking door that flinched me from my peace, thinking of it now as the first little sparkle that set everything in motion. In came an older woman clad in priestly robes. She smiled dryly and sat by my bed, setting her wrist firmly on my forehead. Her smile grew lighter, "Less warmth." And before I could even open my mouth, filled me with answers, "I am Danica, healer, and you are in the temple of Kynareth – in Whiterun. The soldiers carried you from the tundra yesterday; you were unconscious, gripped in a high fever."

Taken aback by human presence I fumbled for words, blushing when I found none, so I just touched her hand knowing nothing else, and whispered, "Thank you."

I remembered Vienne and grew pale, but she got the better of me again, "Your mare they caught by the gates; she's stabled just outside the walls. With her saddlebags."

I could only sigh in relief, "Thank you..."

"I'm also delivering you a message from our jarl: he bids 'our fair guest' – so he, Baalgruf, called you – visit him in Dragonsreach, his hold, to which I said 'not today, she's weak with fever, and if I anything know, highly born and well deserving of our best courtesy, which is to not stir the sick from their beds' – so I shooed the messenger from my door, bidding him come tomorrow to see about it again, for I had to tend to our fair guest, a breton dame called…?"

"Helenita…" I stumbled, "My name is Helenita."

"Thank you, Helenita," she said with a motherly smile.

A brief pause ensued, she keeping her gentle eyes on me (they had a blessed quality of having no weight- one felt at ease, as if being watched by a family member), me listening the sound of my own breathing. All was quiet, and I felt warm and drowsy. I surprised myself then, speaking aloud a stray thought, "Why did you say 'highly born'?"

"Young lady, I have seen in my profession countless humans, and don't be offended when I say this, but I've likely never seen a Breton as white as you, nor do I remember the last time I touched a skin as soft as yours with these hard fingers. Not only this, but your robes don't belong to a commoner – unless in the west even farmers shacks are built of gold. You don't have to say anything, Helenita is good enough for me, but you can expect to be inquired for the rest of it up in the hold."  
"Thank you," I whispered cheeks reddened, embarrassed but also gratified by her remarks.

She leaned over to swipe aside a stray curl tickling my brow, "I'll get you water and some soup."

A weakness induced by fever dispelled the anxiety cast by the Jarls invitation – I did wonder what sort of mess I'd gotten involved in, for how long I'd be kept here, and what sort of inquisition they'd prepared for me. But at the same time all of that felt insignificant. The bed and the sun were so blissful. For my part I'd easily have believed I fell into malaria on horseback, and what happened on the tundra was but hallucination. Yet only thinking about yesterday set my skin on shivers, as if a small breath of that brisk, cold wind had followed me to this room and slept under same covers.

 _(As a side note, all events in life tend to have one thing in common: when things happen, they feel somehow 'less real' than in your dreams. My point is that with everything recounted and retold one might say I ought have been shocked or traumatized or, oblivion, just something, from having witnessed a specimen of a supposedly extinct species, and I would agree with that, but it simply isn't true; I remained more normal than would according to any dramatic customs be decent. I mean that in the end, witnessing a dragon wasn't, and isn't, (much) more dramatic than, let's say, a Vvardenfellian who's only ever heard about horses finally seeing one. Of course it's a little bit more than that (hence 'much' in parenthesis), since horses aren't thirty feet tall and can't burn you to death in seconds, but leaving that aside there's no difference. And whatever the implications were behind a dragon appearing, I awaited the Jarl and his council to explain it for me (despite knowing they probably expected the same of me – I knew enough to confidently know that nobody knew anything about dragons). No, I wasn't fussing and wasn't going to fuss about any of it before I'd sat outside by one of those wooden benches I remember, surrounded by the scent of flowers, listening to the town and the rippling songs of her streams, and felt the sun on my hands and face.)_


	3. Chapter 3

The next dawn I reserved for a glimpse of native life; for a chestful of hay-scenting air – by the marketplace, by the gay flower-mingled benches surrounding withered Gildergreen, by the battlements looking out to the vast tundra. Ample thanks and a hug I gave to Danica for nurturing me. Her folk had washed my robes and parsed its cuts with crimson threads.

I'm ignoring the bits where I shuddered in bouts of anxiety throughout the morn merely thinking of meeting with Baalgruf. This is not to say that a decade ago I had found him dislikeable, quite the contrary; but the ordeal of meeting people in itself was (and is) unpleasant– the worse the more of them, unknown doubly so. Baalgruf would likely be the only person I'd recognize. And bearing in mind his title and so presuming the formality becoming such occasions were but more details to intimidate me. Danica had been an exception to my dread of humans.

But came day I went my way by Her streets and paths that led me through town to the feet of his keep. I had pleaded the messenger to let me make my own way; and upon hearing Whiterun wasn't unfamiliar to me, had withdrawn with a most polite submissiveness.

Up, up, up the long stairs! Carved in stone, curving between the pools that sprang from rocks womb, glimmering in summers light. At the top I paused for breath, leaned over the wooden railing and squinted towards East: Cloud capped mountains pining for skies and decked with snow, a sleepy winter mist falling down their slopes, mingling with crowns of dark green pines. Between those mountains a vigorous river frothing with foam cut through into a distant valley. Could a human remain unwise if born by the roots of those peaks? Imagine their tacit presence, always there, always quiet and still, listening, waiting… Should I fear next to such humans? Dreaded I the jarl? Less now. Much less.

Reluctantly I parted with the mountains, already regretting having dismissed the messenger. The doors were closed, and the lone arms-man leaning indolently against the wall of the keep didn't quite look like one who tends to guests. Even worse, he was wearing a metal facet that hid his eyes and made his features utterly unreadable. Unsure whether the doors were open for anyone, especially for ones without escort, I strode over the planked bridge, half expecting to be halted by command at any moment. But the watchman simply went on leaning motionless, and while seemingly facing ahead into the distance, I knew he wasn't really looking there. The inexplicable discomfort of walking towards closed gates, alone and in foreign country, manifested in that invisible gaze I couldn't answer; it spread all over me, slithered everywhere, tangled into boot laces, knotted my ankles and made all motion feel heavy and clumsy to a point I had to stop and take breath in sudden embarrassment, pretending to have stopped for the scenery with tundra and snow clad mountains, only to then realize I had just done that a second ago, while he had already been watching me. I cleared my throat and stuttered with the words, hesitant whether he should even be addressed, "I'm due to a meeting with the Jarl."

"Go on right in," the man said with an indifferent voice, not turning towards me in the slightest.

So I tried the door. Pushed it. No luck. Pulled it. Didn't even budge.

Flushed and awkward I turned back to him, "Could you... The door...?"

He bounced off his resting pose, walked to me slowly and placed his palm flat on the door, giving it a good thrust. With a thud the door opened, and he gestured me inside, "Ma'am…"

"Thank you…" I mumbled, and stumbled in, forgetting to pull up my hems and instantly tripping on the curb. A weak yelp, two involuntary running steps attempting to regain balance but only trampling worse on the robes – I'd have fallen face flat on the floor and broken my nose, had not a somebody miraculously caught me in air. Two arms took me with such power I gasped in fright; they pulled me in and steered me straight as if I was weightless. Panting for breath and blushed deep red I raised my eyes to meet my savior, the surprise of witnessing a woman only lasting for a spell. Because that was it.

What follows happened in a fraction of a heartbeat – some impact so condensed with meaning and feeling, laced in riddles and shared with shivers it is all incomprehensible, overwhelming sense and senses, and you know not what has happened, and still know what all of it will be named, how it must be named; the word is not in your mind nor on your tongue, yet fills you to the brim, in a shape like never before and still all familiar; like a person from a past life, someone you remember without remembering; so as they always tell of bolts piercing hearts, had mine been pierced then with one, dispersing to an ether soaring in my blood, intoxicating all. Even if during that moment I had no name for what was happening, even if I didn't come up with it during that day, I'd lie if I claimed now that I was oblivious to any of it; I knew, I knew with my entire being, and so naming it in hindsight warps nothing. Yes. I was in love. Head over heels in love. Mercilessly wrenched into the aching tempest of an emotion I thought was dead – What utter foolishness, hear, I had thought my heart buried under Sumurian sands in decades of my youth; that I was separated from life's summer by numeric age, ah, I had thought the spell in which a spring spirit might be smitten in infatuation had there expired in the counting of years. But like a hurtful sun it burst in my chest anew, making no difference at all between a child me and the adult me. Deaf with emotions din, a useless tongue dry in my mouth I stared at her, helpless until I'd wake from that ethereal hold.

At the time I could not think about her beauty, I could not even conceive it, I was struck senseless. But now remembering, I can tell you all about her icy fairness: She stood a head taller, with alabaster skin and a proud countenance. Her hair was long and black, smooth like silk, and her green eyes were seated deep under slanted brows, and calmly resting their weight on me. She smiled. Her lips were full. But her features were cold, clean cast and precise like a sculpture. A marble hardness against which my frailness felt infantile and pitiful.

I could not speak, nor meet her gaze. Blushing twice as intense I laid down my sight, but she, with the easy touch of an earth-like human cupped my cheek in her palm and gently raised my face. Little could she know how her palm burned my cheek. Her smile was curious now, perhaps even amused? My face was melting with heat under her encouraged contact of eyes, and when she opened her mouth it only got worse; her deep voice played shivers from my spine like it was a harp, "Not so fast lady - Here for the meeting?"

"No," I said quickly, though I was, and had wanted to say yes, and had believed I would say yes, and believed I was saying yes, until I heard my tongue say no - How did I even know how to speak?

An awkward pause. She raised her brows, eyeing my embroidered robes.

"I mean yes," I corrected, exposed by her gaze.

Now her amusement was palpable, and in truth I don't know how many times it's possible to feel the surge of blood flushing ones cheeks in such short span, but the red on my face must have been pushing the boundaries of saturation. "I mean it's this hem I have - too long," I sputtered, fiddling the silk twixt my fingers, immediately growing stiff from painful cringing - Had she asked me about it? No. Did it need to be explained? No.

"I understand," she said solemnly, and despite erasing her smile as far as it resides in the curvature of lips, still did so in the twinkling of her eyes, leaving me no doubts whether I'd managed to make a fool of myself.

"Anyway, thank you." I muttered, chest nearly stifled from simultaneous rapture and shame.

She laughed quietly, "That's alright. Come, I'll take you to the throne – You're a scholar, from Cyrodiil?"

I scratched my neck, puzzled by the title she gave me, and with 'Cyrodiil' – did she think me an imperial? "I suppose you could call me that, I think."

She beckoned the way and I followed up the stairs, "You've been through streets, so you must've heard the rumours milling in town, about the dragon in the western fields."

"I- I don't know what Whiteruns people say – But I'd wager folklore and tales don't meet with this story."

She gave me a strange look; I gathered she thought I'd lodged in town for longer or had come from south by road.

"Wait," she stopped and looked at me intensely, "so you're coming from the temple?"

When I didn't follow, a slight confusion ran across her face, "I mean, I heard they brought a foreigner, a woman, to the temple right after the incident - were you really there?"

"That was me, I believe," I answered a bit hesitant, unsure what she was pursuing.

"Say," she gushed, grabbing my sleeves, eyes gleaming, "Did you see the mage? Did they really speak?"

"What mage…?" I said, thoroughly confused until her words began dawning on me; she'd heard some rumors herself, and whatever they'd mentioned about me obviously didn't match my appearance. "Oh… No, no, that was me…"

She stared at me blankly, concealing what surprise she experienced behind that painfully beautiful face. "My mistake. Come," she said, sounding colder, and set on, finishing the stairs with her long legs well before me and joining the crowd gathering by the throne.

She took a glance on me as I 'joined' the crowd too, which was immersed in some conversation facing the Jarl, and when I just stood there behind their backs, hands held at the front and never interrupting anyone (they didn't even notice me (how could they have)), she looked at me the second time with a poignant glint, and began brashly shoving soldiers and court-folk to the left and right, ploughing a path for me, causing so a slight commotion; some furrowed brows and nettled grunts, but when everyone had moved (or been pushed aside), the Jarl saw me, and flinging his arms wide (and knocking his goblet a dozen feet away (which luckily was not filled with wine at the time)) jumped up, his booming exclamation silencing everyone, "By the Divines! Helenita! Who would have thought! The coincidence!"

Everyone's eyes turned to me with curiosity; like a crushing weight that sent the remainder of my courage crashing through the floor. All my strength went into holding my wavering knees still, trying to supress the twitching of my cheeks strained in an attempt to smile.

"My dear friends!" He went on just as loudly, "Welcome our honoured guest, and know that this young lady is not a first time visitor to Skyrim, nor Whiterun or even Dragonsreach!"

"You are very kind, my lord, and I'm taken aback you remember me from a decade past."

"Note now men, how false the begrudges concerning her identity; most rumors claim she's native, some that she's Imperial, some even told of an Altmer - doing Talos knows what for our demise – Banish such thoughts everyone! Helenita is a Breton and a scholar, and as you have sight of your own, will not wonder how I remember – A right princess of Highrock she is; as fair as they come!"

"My lord, you are too kind," I stammered and curtsied, cheeks throbbing with red, "Between us I may confess, and if there are any such present who began or believed rumours of a native affiliation to the Dominion – I'm not actually seven feet tall."

The jarl looked slightly perplexed, said nothing though smiled; but at least someone chuckled modestly in the crowd.

"Five and six lose relativity at the feet of thirty," I explained, already feeling like an idiot, "I take no offense to these rumours - there is no need for apology."

"Well said!" Baalgruf concluded, and slumped back on his throne, "Now we have a number of topics to be discussed in brief – First I would ask you to recite what came to pass at our western watch tower; the tale we have thus far heard come from the mouths of these soldiers," He beckoned to three armed men in the crowd, "who, as any sensible men took shelter in the tower – blame them not for sanity – And couldn't agree on all that transpired; so Helenita, I bid you: The stage is yours."

Instinctively the crowd gave me more room, as if half prepared for some magic works to fill the words. For this request I'd known to prepare, and so dutifully retold what I could. Particular interest was shown towards the dragons words, which I even to this day remember as they had just been uttered – and whom nobody could decipher, or truly expand upon even with the wildest guesses; but more interest was displayed to even the most minutiae gestures from the dragon, and I was asked to repeat and retell these bits so plenteously and in such confusing ways that I likely first said this and then in the next breath almost the complete opposite, but if there was anything to be concluded from the fleeting 'exchange of greetings' (as people began referring the event), it was the singular question derived from the unexpected gentle sophistication of a beast in folktale perceived predatory. Perhaps the only thing wholly agreed upon was that the dragon reaching its claw to me was evidently a 'handshake'.

At first I'd been too terrified to glimpse at anyone else, but now during the interruptions arising from my words and which sometimes grew into heated debates, I could examine the diverse audience, the greatest surprise being a female Dunmer; her virulent eyes were drilling into me with suspicion (were she not xenophobic would have been far more worrisome). Present was also a finely dressed Imperial standing by the throne (presumably the steward), and Baalgruf's new court-magi (at least a different person than then a decade ago), to whom in secret I sent a careful inquisitive thought in hopes to identify the manner of his mana; and found there a formidable might, respectable for a northern wizard official. But more than them or anyone else I without knowing sought the black haired woman, and soon singled her standing on the side, met with her eyes staring right back at mine, stoic and without a trace of warmth unlike by the entrance. I couldn't endure those green eyes for more than a blink, and so laid mine low, heart full of inexplicable stinging and head filled with questions, _'Why did she turn into stone upon learning I am that woman? What have I done to earn that? She smiled at me then, but now her face is cold as a glacier – is it my robes, that I'm a magi? No, no, that wasn't a problem before I told who I was – My ethnicity…? Perhaps… That rumor… If I were a Nord, would she…? What if they doubt this is a sign? I'd be staining some myth with foreign blood… What idiocy… Nobody can be so insane as to presume I'm in any part connected to age old legends – or the appearance of this dragon. Oh Kynareth, let me get from this in one piece – I'll devote my life for you in return-'_

"Helenita, are you alright?"

Everyone had grown silent – I flinched violently, awaking to everyone fixated on me, and for an instant ogled stupefied at Baalgruf before coming to my wits, "What…? Oh. No – I mean, yes - Pardon me, Jarl, I'm still feeling a little weak."

"Of course, it is my place to plead apology for demanding your presence so soon, straight away taxing you in your recovering state – but these matters are of paramount, paramount importance!" He sighed dramatically and shook his head in sadness, "Irileth, bring our guest refreshment, anything you find first."

The Dunmer at his side nodded, and disappeared from the crowd at once.

"So then…! So then-!" He began as if he had an army of words right on his tongue, however immediately quieting down, and reclined back, closing his eyes for a moment while massaging his wrinkled forehead with his fingers, leaving everyone on their toes, before suddenly – though very expectedly – exploding again, and so loudly that I nearly jumped in the air, "Helenita! There is another subject to be discussed – could I say the foremost reason why it was necessary to have you thus brought hither! But before I divulge anything concerning this, let me ask a question – What do you know about High Hrothgar, a mountain perhaps more commonly known as The Throat of the World, the highest mountain in Tamriel?"

"Nothing besides it is home to a monastic sect called the 'Greybeards', that in secrecy and obscurity - to us non-natives - rival the Moth priests of Cyrodiil…"

"Listen to that, my good men! A right scholar she is, didn't I say! And now, Helenita, did you hear the shouting echoing from that mountain but two days back?"

"I was then unconscious, I believe – shouting - does your excellency refer to the voice of Greybeards?"

At this Baalgruf let a boisterous guffaw, "Hear that, men! She's as versed in native myths as a priestess; This is well! This is very well, indeed! For so it happened; The Greybeards parted words that echoed in all of Skyrim. There are none who understand them – but we know no message has been uttered for centuries. The appearance of dragons is the key, and now we come to the part that directly concerns you-" He laid off as Irileth returned with a vase in two hands, and gestured towards me.

"Concerns me, my lord…? I peeped, but he only raised his hand, signifying I should wait.

Irileth came to me, less unkind in eyes and proffering the earthen bowl filled with water, "You look pale- this will help."

Already the slightest trace of its scent lingering to my nose revealed it was Nordic water, and so bolstering all my remaining courage set my lips on the burning surface of that crystal-clear liquid – the pain in my throat, the welling tears under my lids and the knowledge it would not end well were a comforting distraction. It wasn't just any spirits, for it was softer than ewes milk, and so I drank all of it. The silence was absolute, and when gasping for breath I lowered the bowl, empty for all eyes, I was met with an approving murmur and timid applauses.

"So, Helenita! We have discussed this occurrence for two days, and have come to a conclusion that someone should be sent to the monastery atop Hrothgar – Hear, if dragons had appeared elsewhere we would have already heard of it; so we must be among the first to see them – and now I arrive at the phase for which there is no polite wording. Helenita, do you know what we, Nords, humans, know of dragons speaking to mortals? It is no coincidence – they recognise you, Helenita. It sought you, and what this means, none know, except the Greybeards. Do you see where I'm getting at? So as the messenger of these news it is logical only she who is the key herself be sent – in this case, you. Now, now, of course, I nor anyone else in this country have authority over foreign citizens, and so this request is only a plea – yet, the rumour is already out, and will soon be spread everywhere, which leads me to another source of worry; namely that our stricken homeland is on the brink of a civil war – our hold being the last to retain complete neutrality, and so the greater request I have is that you officially accept a pact of bondage to this hold that we may avoid ill conceptions about the occurrence of dragons, in other words that you become the Thane of Whiterun – A title which here would remain solely a formality, but done for the safety of our nation, and for the safety of yourself, as direct affiliation to a wealthy and respected hold will make any third party think twice; there is no telling who will seek to strong-arm you for political gain – I know, the irony is not lost on me either, it is exactly what I am doing now, and you of course have the freedom to walk away from this, but I advise against it; naturally, the wellbeing of my people comes before all, here taking the right to call all of Skyrim 'my people'. Weigh the matter, and you see that my concern is well founded and my request to you done in humble heart and of sheer necessity. In turn, we would imbue your purse and supply you with any assistance, helping towards reaching any destination or accomplishing any task, personal or otherwise, including what brought you to our native soil, and lastly vouch to look to your protection while within our borders, protection both political and physical. Should you accept, I emphasize that it remains wholly unbinding; there is no obligation laid upon you, no service that must be rendered, nothing."

Already at the very beginning of his speech I began realising his pursuit, simultaneously combating the intoxicating wave of warmth rising to my head, becoming in a blink assured that those very thin shadows of doubt I'd briefly had about this meeting since it's conception were real: All of this was laid down beforehand; they had known long since who I was, had gone through my saddlebags and discovered my identity, set a loose scene on the basis of what Baalgruf remembered of my personality, and then upon seeing me, he had used his leaders talent of reading people and played out a decisive scheme of calculated coercion, this being here the presence of all these unaffiliated people, the social pressure, that I was yet recovering from a hard fever, that I was never offered a seat, and that Irileth had 'happened' to find extremely strong and soft spirits when I would inevitably begin showing signs of fatigue, the peer pressure and not Irileth or Baalgruf forcing me to drink it, and most of all this last and abrupt thrusting of honour on my shoulders, this suggestion of dubbing me a knight right pushing me back against a wall – a wall of unknowing, formed of an obscure fear towards foreign tradition and culture - I knew not how hard an offense declining would be -, and more than this the unknowing of his promise; was I free to walk away, or was it merely a figure of speech? Bear in mind that balancing this abstract assault was the frankness of Baalgruf and the purity of his motives which I most powerfully believed, his reasoning thus laid out was well founded. Tipsy, paranoid and unsure what I should be frightened for, but still decisively and greatly frightened, I ogled at him, frozen, and when he rose up and came down the steps of his throne and repeated his proposal in a way that left only two ways to answer, either yes or no, and already holding the metal badge of a Thane poorly (intentionally?) concealed in his fist, I panicked and broke under the merciless, expectant silence and could but listen to my own bleak voice answering, "Yes, I will."

So he set the badge above my left breast, and spread his arms, looking around and exclaiming, "Hail Helenita, the justly created Thane of Whiterun!"

People applauded, even cheered, looked me in the eyes, smiling and some came to shake my hand, pat me on the shoulder; all of which seemed only a dream; I reached my hand without knowing, smiling back but bereft of all understanding – I was drunk, and numbed by a very deep pain of feeling immensely violated. All my fain memories and fondness of the town, of the Jarls slightly eccentric and friendly person died and were replaced by hurt and undigested shame. Only the intoxication prevented me from falling apart, and on the brink of becoming overwhelmed by all the attention bestowed on me, I finally pleaded for something to sit on. My request was immediately carried out, the soldiers in absence of anything more suitable carrying an entire bench from the dining table. I sat down and breathed heavily, holding my chest, pretending to feel my badge, but only wanting to console the relentless pounding of my heart.

I have no idea how many words I missed, but Baalgrufs voice forced me to momentarily suppress my inner clamour; I raised my heavy eyes, trying my hardest to concentrate, "Concerning your protection, and according to custom since the dawn of time, I will personally issue you a housecarl who will answer of your safety with their life – Helenita, as your housecarl I appoint one of our most capable men-at-arms: Lydia."

He gestured towards the same black haired woman, who at once stepped forward, staring at me with now utterly unreadable, cold green eyes. The coincidence that fate had deployed this impossible trap made my heart halt – her beauty became the anchor of all my senses as I feared I'd pass out from the bombardment of shock: into that tall and bold posture, into that face and those eyes I latched everything, all weakness and fear, all my despair there could be no uttering for, and all that her own image set in motion inside me, and so the world in my vision grew dark around her, until she was the sole streak of light, her beauty amplified to unbearable heights – I broke off my stare, internally screaming for mercy; how could in Nirn could I endure the tumult of all these rambling emotions and not lose composure?! Yet I held, only some stray tears tickling down my cheeks, which, if anyone else saw them, they waved off as joy, for all this time I had been smiling like an idiot; a smile that had me wincing in internal pain – What Lydia thought of my twitching smile or tears as she bowed stiffly in front of me, I couldn't know, but her frozen and impervious gaze must either have seen more than I'd dare guess, or then confidently nothing at all.

Only when I stood up did I truly realize my smashed state. The vaseful of spirits was no more but to make a Nord tipsy, but for a little Breton it was worse – much, much worse. The world spun neath my feet, and what followed mingles in memory to a dream kindled state, the only jarring being the smoothness of all, further ascertaining the unpleasant doubt that I could never have refused – They had a room prepared for me in Dragonsreach, and once Lydia had helped me to bed I drifted off, thoughtless and weakened by a returning fever.


	4. Chapter 4

_Now remembering and writing, I occasionally feel like gouging my eyes out from stifling shame - how can any person be such a wuss as I was (and perhaps still am)?!_

 _Oh Kyne, my mind was blank then. It amazes me how bereft of will I was, and how many quiet blessings of fortune it must have taken from all the Divines together to have me survive thus far - I am still alive._

 _If I had written this journal (if it were even possible) earlier, perhaps as such and such happened, it'd have looked entirely different. Oh. I wouldn't have had the heart to admit even to myself the extent of my cowardice and mediocrity. I'd have lied and explained things that weren't, in case someone would have read those pages, so as to not reveal myself. But now I can mostly smile, feel even affection and pity towards this past-me - what a sweet wretch she was. And I can help her, by reaching through time to the 'there and then', and untangle that which I then had no strength or time to solve._

* * *

That dusk, once I was on my feet and feeling better, there was dinner served in the great hall, and though clamorous with all household people, a group of us formed a small circle by the Jarls chair, namely him and me and Lydia, and his court-magi, a Nord called Farengar, and his steward, the Imperial, Proventus – and it was all exceedingly dreary, filled with insinuations but never straight demands of my journey to Hrothgar, this would-be tactful fine-handing of my almost-but-not-quite palpable responsibility to obey that wish making me only lean to the thought I was in fact their second choice; were they absolutely certain I had any meaningful role concerning dragons, they'd force me and send an entire detachment as my escort, but at the same time they were too uncertain to entirely dismiss me, and so had settled with this halfway approach, with some chance of obtaining answers or clarity or whatever they expected, but without enough investment to mark them loss in the event I should fail. Bold with honey-mead I made a decision then to flee under night, to shake this madness off my hems and to make way where my summons first demanded me.

To casual inquiries concerning the whereabouts that had brought me there, I responded with a half-truth mirroring their half-honesty, of being employed by my current but undisclosed research which was pending on humanist sources as opposed to literary ones, leaving in the air an easy assumption that the topic was concerned with late history of Morrowind, therefore offering feasible explanation why specifically Skyrim had attracted me – where else were there mainland refugees in such quantities but here? To questions trying to specify my identity I would state only that I was a lecturer and a researcher in the mother college of mages – which wasn't really a lie at all –, and to steer the conversation away from Cyrodiil I asked about housecarls. Naturally then, listening to that discourse on history, honour and tradition, all presently manifested in Lydia, I couldn't avoid glimpsing at her and wonder what she felt like being ordered to a pact, that they (the Nords) seemed to take to heart – and just how grave this sense of duty was and is, I couldn't then have imagined. But then had Lydia wordlessly continued eating and lent not an ear to Farengar or Baalgruf, as if she knew all of that by heart and idiomatically agreed on every sentiment, or pretended obliviousness the topic was concerned with her in the first place. Yet even after their explaining, the role of such a bodyguard seemed indeterminate, on one hand she was not a servant, and calling her as such would have been insulting, but neither was she meant to be simply an escort, yet friendship and close bonds, though commonplace, were ideally frowned upon. Much more independent than a servant, but bound more severely than one at the same time – She was to answer for my life before else. It all sounded pompous and puffed up ceremonial nonsense, as if declaimed straight from some stone tablet upon which their forefathers had engraved all the commandments concerning such and such, and so I disregarded most of what they told as cultural propagation, guessing instead the truth lied closer to Housecarls being glorified servants, less useful than actual servants in duty but much more valuable as social status symbols of ancient honour or tradition. But I'll conclude here that I was blissfully unaware of the depth of my ignorance towards Nordic culture.

Later I was back in my small quarters, sitting by a writing desk and faced with the quietness of night slowly creeping onwards, hands crossed over Savos Aren's unfurled message and my mind falling back into eerie dreaming, until my eyes were swirling with fatigue, and the blots of ink on the paper that were a promise of reality and rationality began dancing in my eyes like little ghosts and phantoms, leaving me helpless in a brooding chaos.

I knew not what kind of precautions the Jarl had laid for me, and not truly caring I left my room in the middle of the night, adjusted that my attempt would be prevented, and that in this event I'd fully let them do so – What was to come, was to come. Yet the two sentries outside the doors of the keep merely shared a brief look and shrugged when to their questions I explained that it is my wont to go on night-time walks, and so they let me descend to town. Perhaps the Jarl hadn't with seriousness expected I'd try vanishing, least of all that night, and so hadn't given any specific instructions on how to treat me, for at the town gate another two guardsmen, though restless by my request and mutely disapproving, could neither refuse my right to walk out the gate-door, especially given my new badge that dangled visible for all eyes.

Soon I was by the stables, breathing freely under a glinting firmament, hugging and kissing Vienne and whispering words of nonsense in her ear whilst the grumpy stable-hand saddled her. For his troubles and broken sleep I tossed him some coin, which softened his sour looks and even earned a gentle pat on Vienne's back. The only remorse stinging my chest was the thought of Lydia; of leaving behind this cold and achingly beautiful stranger, who had even been intended by fate to be acquainted with me. Though such a short flash of her presence had already had an effect on me (though magnified in parts surely due to the tiredness of my conflicted spirit), at the time it wasn't enough to have me wholly identify what had happened, and so I defied what fate had seemingly intended to test me with, half-certain her image would soon enough blend into another dreamy figurine of a goddess forever unattainable, leaving only a small, small melancholy mark, a gentle pain that thrives in solitary humans and is not all unwelcome, because it acts as a cooling comfort like a summer rain, dousing unwanted charges like anger, bitterness and jealousy.

Indeed, trotting east an old paved Imperial road and filling my lungs with frisk northern air again and again seemed to dispel the haze of madness about Whiterun- the purifying ether seeped into me and invigorated my being, relieving pain and stress, so much the image of Lydia began dissolving into that same disappearing mental miasma, and I began believing she'd fall into oblivion in some days.

On the long road to Windhelm only two incidents happened, first being an illegal highway toll collected by some shady individuals manning an abandoned guard-fort, which stood in a narrow section where the mountainside pushed the roadside straight into the riverside. I had no way of going around the old checkpoint, and in preparation had cast what my slim illusion skills allowed, namely aging my appearance around sixty years, to help any men avoid unwanted thoughts. They were happy to get rid of the scared grandma who with shaking hands had paid the demanded 30 pieces upright – a preposterous toll for sure, but apparently fair enough the officials hadn't yet bothered to send a detachment to sort it out.

I kept a hard pace, afraid of the chance I was being chased or tracked from Whiterun. Vienne I could water by steep embankments of the river, and since I had kept her well, fed her by regular schedule and carefully avoided straining her throughout my journey, she could close great distances with her fine supple legs that were taut as the strings of a violin. Came nightfall I lodged at Mixwater Mill. For some coin my aging hostess kept me well; served sturdy stew, offered a bed by the fireplace and shared of her finer grains. I saw to Vienne's feeding myself, and spent some hour by her in the barn, sharing some idle ruminations, observations of the wind, of its melodies and its manner of talking in the north, of its whistling in crags and between rocks, of its rustling in the hay and of its playfulness with dried leaves and rolling tumbleweeds, and of my sadness that there would be no translating those voices. She listened patiently, eyeing me sometimes amusedly, gently snorting at the silliest bits. I told her I believed she is the wiser of us two, and she merely cocked her head towards me, letting a quiet but satisfied neigh. I wound my arms on her neck and pressed my face against hers, breathing with her for a time, thankful to Kyne and all Divines she was with me.

The second incident, by the next nightfall, appeared by western slopes of Eastmarch. Close to midnight the resting wind began acting up; alarmed I stared to the skies, witnessing a dark mass of clouds amassing everywhere, silently and with impossible speed, as if a divine tempest was being played out in heights beyond our hearing, soon completely veiling Masser and Secunda. The coldness of the wind was familiar and the clatter of Vienne's hooves turned uneven, hesitant. I leapt down from the saddle and pulled her close, stroked her mane as she whimpered in fear, "Don't fret, darling, I'll keep you safe. Follow my breathing, see how even it is, do you see? My chest rises like this, and goes down like so… There, there, my love, I'll hold you fast…"

So talking to her and spending all my strength into keeping my breathing even, I lead her to a thicket just off the road. There I hugged her, prying through leaves towards the skies. A cleft formed in the clouds, and from it descended a dragon blacker than the night. This one flew soundlessly, circled the East March and in its flight displayed an entirely different personality than the bronze one I'd met; deft its wings, but their beating sharp, controlled and forceful, its glide spurred by great strength rather than deploying the wind through skilled steering of its sail-like membranes. It spilled no fire, screeched nor sang once, but sought for something with its eyes that shone as two little stars. I didn't want to meet this dragon. The intensity in its every motion came as a warning; the thought of facing this specimen made me shiver – whatever it would say, or do, I didn't want to find out. After some passes it darted up and vanished into the cloud mass like a molten iron bolt shot into a clump of dough. A puff of smoke or cloud-matter dispersed from the point of impact, and nightly peace tucked the land back in sleep.

Not more but two miles ahead the very same road, when the snows of Windhelm county already loomed in our sight, a faint sound of canter from yond our backs had me halt. That sound, quickly strengthening, brought a sweat on my skin; heart stilled with a dread of being confronted by someone from Whiterun, I weighed for a blink whether to run or to turn. I urged Vienne to a gallop, but after some dozen yards stayed her again - what foolishness, as if I would have her gallop all the way to Windhelm - where else could I stop, and then what? I'd be caught at the gates or the inn. Come what may, I thought, and turned Vienne the other way, and then locked my eyes on the road, fists kindled with flame for safe measure. Not before long a lone, cloaked figure emerged on the slope of the last little hill we'd descended from. For a brief moment I squinted my eyes and looked hard at the figure, before I suddenly became very embarrassed. How in Mundus could I know who it was? A passer by to who knows where. A traveler like me, or a bandit. A patrol or a messenger. And he or she saw but a tense figure, saddled in the middle of the empty road as to bar passage, following their every motion with keen eyes like a lowly high-way robber. I pretended to not have noticed the rider, and turned Vienne towards the bank of the river that ran alongside the road. For some reason I also got the idea that my pausing would seem more plausible if I was dismounted, and so I kicked my leg over Viennes flank and hopped down, taking her to the waterside to drink. Kyne knows why this stupid idea seemed good to me - what if the figure was a robber themselves? Now I was unmounted, and could not flee. Realizing this I nervously peeked over the saddle (I was hiding behind Vienne) as the figure trotted down the slope. I couldn't see, but I knew those eyes were watching at me. Eyes in the shadows of a dark cloak, drilling into me. Soon the figure guided their horse off the road, close to where I had left it, and turned right towards me - my heart began racing, and I quickly ran around Vienne, placing myself in front of her, fists kindling now with visible flames, ready to blaze and to burn.

Perhaps I expected the sight of my fiery hands to halt the human - her, I soon realised -, to have her raise a voice, to flinch and to peddle back even, but she did none of these things, no; she strode slowly and calmly, lept off her saddle and treaded towards me, unarmed and without hesitation. And then... Just something happened. I didn't have the resolve. I was afraid – terrified even. To use a spell to stop her proved insurmountable - and at this instant as I dithered, she sprinted. She was fast, too fast for me; I had barely enough time raise my arms and yelp in fear before she reached me and grasped my wrists. Her grip was like iron; I whimpered in pain as she pulled me against her front so harshly that I couldn't stir even an inch.

"You blasted witch...!" She sizzled from between gritted teeth, "Let that fire go."

I obeyed her at once, tears of pain clouding my sights. "Please don't hurt me," I pleaded her, panting for air - and she let me loose. I stumbled a step and two away from her, tripped and fell onto the dirt, too weak and wavering in heart to even think of casting a spell.

She stood motionless for a while, waiting. Vienne had remained completely calm, eyeing me quite indifferently, completely unalarmed by what the woman was doing to its mistress - the voice, the shape of her face and the glinting green of her eyes, now revealed by lunar light, returned to me an image, and I sighed deeply. It was Lydia.

"Sorry..." I mumbled without really knowing why, stood up and begun swiping away the dirt off my robes. How in Mundus had she found me?

She turned the other way, and would look over her shoulder only after a lengthy moment. When she turned back to me her whole posture had become so tense it suffocated what little bravery I still had in my heart.

"You thought you'd go to Winterhold first?" She said, coldly and with malice, "Tough luck, witch."

"How did you know about...?" I stuttered, panicking - had they read Savos's letter?

"Why else would a little mageling be in this country? You rogue. Sly enough to deceive idiots, but not a wolf. Is there another way but through Windhelm? You don't have it in you to pass through the mountains."

"Alright," I snorted, offended, "And now what?"

She bounced off her pose and grasped my arm within a blink - my heart halted again, prepared for hurt, but she was content with gripping my arm just hard enough to have me wince, to wholly capture my frightened attention, "You'll turn track, and follow me to Hrothgar. What they'll say, they'll say - after, you may go where you want, and I must follow, perforce."

"You - my servant - order me to follow you?"

She pulled me in so close her nose squished mine. Her eyes were gleaming, "Not your servant, witch. This isn't some merry pact; you'll do what fate will have you do - play some small part in the turmoil of these times. You'll do as I say, because you are afraid, and because you can't desist me - you know you can't cast a single spell unless I allow you to."

Her anger, and that invisibly trembling strength that seeped into my body from her touch, drained all my faltering courage. She was right about the last part. I couldn't stand her virulent gaze, and laid my eyes low, thoroughly ashamed of my weakness, and muttering even more shameful words, "I will do as you say."

She shoved me away, puffing, "And don't run from me again. You'll drive me to misfortune."

It might be difficult to explain how even in that state, hurt, heart quite shattered and spent in agony, she stole what little could else have happened inside my head. Her anger was so frighteningly beautiful. I could but stare at her, mouth probably gaping.

She looked at me like I was an idiot, "Do you know how many lords will want to hire a housecarl who let their previous master die? You'll get yourself killed, I'm certain, if you don't let me do what I must."

"Alright... Sorry."

"No."

"What no?" I peeped, confused.

"Don't be sorry. I hate the word."

"Sor... Alright..."

She shook her head, "Come, saddle up. We can rest at Darkwater Crossing."

With easy assurance she went back to her roan, seemingly ready to gallop away at that instant.

 _What arrogance!_ I thought then, visioning in my mind how she must have spitefully smiled at me, how easily she'd put me down. "Did you read my letters?" I said sharply.

She went on fixing some straps on her spurs, saying nothing at first. Her muteness set my blood boiling. Thought she I was their pawn after all?

"Do you have any idea why I'm in your country? I didn't come here to climb your dumb rocks, least of all to be a part of your bed-side tales."

She ceased her work, still turned away from me, but I could see how her breathing turned heavy. But that didn't stop me, "Aha…! So that's what this is about. You don't want your dragons to talk with humans who have false blood in their veins. The shame of it! A Breton staining your virginal, stupid myth-"

She spun on her heels, and in a flash her hand was pressed on my mouth; she drove me up against the nearest tree so hard I quite lost my breath on impact. At that moment all the blood fled from my limbs; I could've well passed out – merciful Divines I was terrified of her vulgarity, so abrupt and fierce like I was with a beast and not a human; I remember clearly how I felt myself to be but a light little birch-bough on the mercy of a hard sea-tempest, so easily did she rough-handle me. She wouldn't let me even squeal, pinning me in a humiliating position between the trunk of the tree and her legs. She glared at me with a venomous smile, staring right down into my bewildered eyes, baring her teeth and sizzling through them, "Careful there, mageling. Not all ice is made to be tested with a stick."

I thought she'd really hurt me this time; my watery eyes begged her to reconsider, ogling at her helplessly and fearfully. I couldn't speak or move, and for one scant moment we'd remain so, eyes locked, touching; hers out of anger, mine out of fear – it was a short, short moment, but one that is imprinted in my mind - I had fallen completely limp, but she wouldn't ease her hold yet for a while, no; suddenly she looked confused, anger washed away as quickly as it had roused, as if it only now dawned to her what she was doing. She released me, took a step back, blinked and turned back to her roan.

My knees gave in at that instant, and I collapsed onto the leaf-covered dirt with a muffled thump, panting for air – I knew nothing at all. Soon she returned to me once more, pulled me up from the shoulders, albeit now a little bit gentler, "Come, my thane – on with it, I'm not your foe."

She walked me to Vienne and lifted me to my saddle, "Back the same road you rode, we'll take a path up the mountainside by fort Mistwatch."

I just nodded, dumbfound, and too embarrassed to even look her way.


	5. Chapter 5

_The days spent on that road are difficult to write of – the morns and the nights were one with a dull wordlessness; my fearful silence, and her silence. For with Lydia silence was not uncommon. To walk or ride with her for a whole day without speaking a word – I don't think silence has ever been easier as with her. Yes, I had no words, and felt no need to speak any word as you'd do with mer and men no matter where you were. She certainly wouldn't speak unless she had to, no; at times she would only look at me, and thought she I were in need of rest she'd halt her horse, and we'd sit on seats of moss upon rocks and fallen trees. I had to never ask her to stop, for she knew with a single glance when I needed a rest, and no matter how embarrassingly often that was true, it seemed to not bother her. At evenings she'd make a fire with flint and tinder, take out her bow and leave her heavy vestments with me. Sometime later she'd return with game or fish. I'd walk around our fireplace while she was gone, squatting by bushes and any green growths, searching for berries and for roots; something I knew from childhood years – the only skill and knowledge I had not becoming my fortune of birth._

 _The first discussion, I think, we had on the second night (on the first we'd lodged by Darkwater crossing). And it was about sleeping in the furs that were rolled and knotted up on her saddlebags. I knew nothing of living in the woods or fields – how could I have? She told me I would freeze during the night, did I not wrap only my naked body in the furs. I'd not dare to lay low before she'd be fast asleep herself and turned on her side to the other way._

 _I would hardly remember the world surrounding us – at least any part farther than some hundred feet. By evenings it was all misty on the mountainside. There were pines and the occasional golden birch, the soil was damp with rain and scenting with dead leaves and wet grass. On the skies there were constellations I'd never seen in the south. I'd breathe and stare to the firmament and sometimes down to the misty woods with round eyes, baffled by the sweetness of cold northern air, and overwhelmed by how sensitive all growing things seemed and were in a land such as that, sprouting flowers from cracks of rock, peeking green amidst boulders, all frisky and content in a cold silence. The path we took was worn and aged, the cobbles buried beneath the soil or altogether eroded down the hilly slopes, but it was still a path. We were alone in the world, I thought. We saw none else, and the only sounds were the wind in the leaves and the singing of birds – and a distant song of water streaming somewhere far within and between the mountain rock._

 _Once or twice I harbored the thought of fleeing in the night. But I'd grown too wary of Lydia. She'd know which way I'd have taken, for I knew none but one. She'd catch me, and then force me again. The coarse way she'd touched me had left its mark in me. I'd not given her any permission to do so, but she had, just or not, and there was nothing I could do to stop her. It made me feel miserable and violated. I did not want to think about that scene by the waterside where she'd caught me, but in the evenings and during the nights I couldn't drive those thoughts away; thoughts which returned always to the terrible sensation of Lydia using her strength against me, to the utter feeling of powerlessness in her hard hands; as if this power (of malice?), hidden somewhere inside her, had worked itself through her hands and invaded me, overwhelmed me – I was bitter at her, and stole sour glances at her way when we rode and when we sat by the crackling fire. Her face revealed nothing but a deep calmness; the way how her emerald eyes stared away into the distance and into the swaying boughs of trees, and the way she sometimes followed little things like a late summer's butterfly fluttering upon dewy heathers, blue wings iridescent and translucent in the thin rays of dusk-light, yes, these her ways spoke of nothing but peace. She had her thoughts, but I saw none of those, and perhaps all of them – she herself would naught but faintly smile at the butterfly, at a ladybug sleeping on her rusted blade, at a golden birch leaf falling on her face; a sort of motherly-smile, serene and easy, as if she were a thousand years old, and had ascended to a higher understanding of the vanity of all, and had devoted her entire self to what at all mattered – the ladybug and the butterfly, and that the woods and little brooks were alive, living as they always have, and Kyne grant them to always live._

 _Then I could not have said how I felt – did I hate her? A part of me might have thought so. But that did not take away from her beauty in the least. Every time I glanced her way I had also butterflies in my stomach. How did Lydia feel of those days, I wondered then and now as well, did she curse her fate that had bound her to a mistress she loathed, or did she even care at all? Her eyes, when locked into a distant realm, somewhere hidden between the leaves and the needles of pine, were far removed from the realm of our bodies. She was as indifferent towards me as if I was a rock, and so her presence never made me feel uneasy on its own – only if my neurotic thoughts came involved._

* * *

At Ivarstead we had a longer rest. It was a small and quiet village right by the root of Hrothgars steps. Vienne and her sturdy roan, Sadko, we would leave by the stables, for Hrothgars icy steps were not meant for horses. The inn had simple rooms for passing pilgrims. We'd spend a dreamy evening by the hearth-fire, eating soup and drinking mead. She had a pipe and leaves of tobacco. The flame in the hearth had now her attention. She seemed not at all a soldier or a hired sword then, but like a wizard, eyes glimmering in the dim light, locked somewhere far in the infinity that was somehow contained within the flames, absent-mindedly smoking her pipe, blowing thoughtful puffs of that miasma through her full lips. It is almost embarrassing how I remember such and such, the way her lips touched the wooden pipe, their red curve yielding a little to that hard surface; flesh softer than anywhere else in her gaunt looks. Her pants and boots were made of leather, and she would have nothing else on her but a loose cotton shirt, with strings of linen to tie a deep neck, though she had left it wide open. I spent shamefully long moments observing her clavicles and the way her black hair nested in the pits above her collarbones, on naked ivory skin that seemed as cold as the snow. I'd shiver in my silken robes, with an undershirt and a dress beneath – and she seemed to never be cold, but merely radiated with warmth, as if a fire burned also within her body.

"Have you been to Hrothgar before?" I asked her, livened a little by the honey-mead they served.

She shook her head, not taking her gaze off the dancing fire.

For a moment I stared with her to the flames, waiting that she'd say something. But she remained confident in her muteness, sprawling on her chair in what seemed a mellow mood. A lightness that didn't welcome me, it seemed. I shifted on my chair to get up, hoping for her to notice, hoping for just something to happen – anything at all. Even the tiniest little gesture from her. But she wouldn't budge even when I stood up – not before I'd almost passed her chair. She leaned forward and put her hand on my waist, just like that. My heart skipped a beat; her palm was warm like the hearth, sending a wave of heat everywhere inside me; a sweet heat burning on my waist.

"Sit," she said very gently.

I obeyed her wish at once, full to the brim with a readiness to listen and to talk.

"My thane, would you tell me why you came here then?"

"Other than the college, or do you mean why the college?"

"Yes," she said.

I blinked at her, at a loss for words. "There are no other reasons. And these reasons you have learned by now."

"No. I haven't. Nobody has read your letters from what I know. Besides, I can't read."

"Oh…" - Her being felt a little less frightening after that confession, as odd as that might sound. At least there was something that she could not. In the warm light she looked a little softer than before. "I don't know much myself either. It is an invitation. That is all I can or will conclude on that topic."

"I did not mean that," she said quietly.

Again I was baffled, questioning her with my eyes, but soon faltering under the easiness she met them with. She'd stare right at me and into me, very lightly, but yet so firmly.

"Are we talking about weeks, months – years?"

"Oh…" – The real nature of her question stung my chest: 'How long do I have to endure you?' "Weeks or months, I think…" I said reluctantly.

She reclined back, and said nothing. I sat on the edge of my seat, growing bitter and frustrated – that was all she had wanted to know?

Another long moment, and nothing. Nothing at all. I leapt up and tried to briskly go past her, but she stopped me again, this time by taking my hand and pulling me down to the chair next to her. "Sit," she repeated, quietly laughing.

"Okay…" I mumbled, flustered, heart stuck again in my chest.

"What manner of sorceress are you?"

"Well that's quite a difficult question."

"Is it?"

"I'm familiar with all the schools, if that's what you mean."

"Say, if there is a troll up on the mountain. Or a bear. Can you help me without burning me to cinders?"

"A troll?" I whispered, growing pale.

She let another laugh and took my hand in both of hers, "Easy now, there are enough pilgrims using that road to keep the wildlife away – but you never know."

"I don't know… I haven't ever killed anything, if that's what you mean."

"Among else. But you need to get rest – I'll wake you up in the morn. We should reach Hrothgar before dusk that way. Come," she stood up, "it's time."

She pulled me up and pushed me towards the room, halting when I began resisted at the curb.

"What is it now?"

"This one has only one bed," I protested

"And?"

"But where will you sleep?"

"Are you dumb?"

"What…?"

She sighed and shoved me in, closing the door after us with a kick of her heel. "How do you think houses here could be warmed? By burning a forests worth of logs in 20 fireplaces in each room? Undress."

"How… how much?" I asked awkwardly, stiff in the body, fists clutching the silk of my robes.

She just looked at me for a while, stupefied. "As much as you like, your highness."

She took off only her boots and her leather pants and climbed to the bed, covering herself under the furs. "You will get cold just standing there," she said from beneath the furs, yawning, and front turned towards the wall.

With trembling fingers I untied the laces on my chest, tripped in the dark taking off my boots, then climbed in next to her, carefully avoiding touching her, trying to fit as comfortably as was possible on the ledge of the bed.

She sighed audibly, turned on her side quite rashly and grabbed me into a rough embrace, "Don't you say a word now," she said, frustrated, "shut up and sleep."

I didn't dare to even whimper, but sleep would not come for a long while. I was shivering, not with cold, but with a foolish rapture. Her heat was a bittersweet comfort; her heavy arm rounding my back frightening and protective – I felt safe, and a captive. I'd listen to her quiet snoring, utterly hypnotized, unable to think of anything else but that sensation of closeness.

* * *

Up a mere few hundred stairs and the world was lost in a mist of snow and wind. Ancient steps of stone, half buried in silvery snow, and a pale smoothness covering the soil; soft soundless footsteps upon a pallid thin foil – shrouded away on a mountain high above the mundane world: is it a wonder then, if at one moments whim I'd cry, without quite understanding why – all I knew was one sideway glance, lent my way, and a black swish of hair like silk, a tall human form in a white nothingness, half vanished in a wind of veiling whiteness; a statuesque figure in motion, treading towards another nothingness and ever without a sign of fatigue; separate of me but bound to me, by the lowly word of some lowly soul – here there was no world – there was nothing; and even in the nothing, she was distant like I were only a dream – She'd halt and wait my panting self to catch her up, she'd let me take a breath, lean against the surface of a rock, sit upon a seat of stone, and soon give me a gentle shove to the back.

Some halfway up the path whence I'd lost count on the steps, or who knows how far the keep yet remained – that is what I thought, after a full mornings climb – there pierced a screech the whistling wind. That sound had my heart freeze; it had Lydia freeze and slide her hand to the hilt of her belted blade.

We wouldn't dare to shift a feet, prying only for another sign – we both thought the same, we must have, the sound did not come from the side of the mountain-rock – it came from through the wind, from within the wide open skies. And then they were there; the faint flapping of wings, suddenly strengthening, before out of nowhere a drake stormed through the winds – a small, slender drake, not more than some ten feet from tail to jaw – it had flown so eagerly, or perhaps even tossed by the winds, that its landing was all but graceful: it tripped over its front legs upon impact and rolled in the snow ahead of us on the path, but quickly came back on its feet, and like a lizard darting with little leaps ran towards me all too fast – Lydia could but draw her blade, perhaps the drake never even noticed her, the membranes of its wings which it used as an extra pair of legs to move faster just threw Lydia out of the way – I'd not have had the time to think of a fitting spell to stop it – even if I'd have possessed such a power, nevermind being collected enough to murmur the syllables and to visualize the spell – a dead winters peace landed my heart in that moment, I'd stare into its salivating maw as it rushed through snow like a rolling carriage set loose – and it seemed to take forever to close that brief distance, even with that tremendous speed. Its eyes were swirling with a green murkiness. Behind, Lydia had come on her feet, and was running towards me, blade in hand – but she seemed so slow, hardly even moving – I raised my hand towards the drake, and it made a fierce effort to slow down, coming to a halt by my palm, its scaly skin brushing against my fingertips. It growled, poked my palm lightly, moved its head first to the left and then to the right, staring at me, but never crossing the distance set by my stretched arm.

"Don't raise your hand against it," I spoke to Lydia over the wind, not taking my eyes off the dragons gaze.

She stood there some feet behind, dumbfound.

It's swampy eyes were quite peaceful now, perhaps they had been the whole time; and the way it gazed into me expectantly made all fear fade away; why, it seemed almost as if it waited for a gesture from me.

"Why did you seek me?"

It parted its jaws, and let out a surprisingly soft squeal, not at all becoming the beastliness it embodied. Baffled by its persistently expectant gaze I carefully placed my palm on its snout, brushing its brows with my fingers – it laid low by my feet, clearly pleased by that touch.

"What in Shor's name are you doing?" She sizzled nervously, pointing her blade towards the beast but not daring to disrupt our peace.

Upon hearing her voice the dragon shuddered and glanced over its shoulder, murky eyes swirling now with fiery intents. Its jaws began emanating with a melting heat, a light growing inside its head, exuding from between its teeth. I knew not what would've happened; Lydia braced herself to leap aside – but she had no need. For a thunderous blast of the air had us all halt and look to the winds and tufts of snow. A tempest within the mountain winds grew louder, until that storm swallowed all: from amidst the glimmering snow dusts there emerged a gargantuan dragon, with a wingspan so broad the tips of its membranes were lost in the misty whiteness. It landed on the slope near soundlessly, clutching two large boulders with its claws for a footing, and then remained unmoving like a statue, unaffected by the winds as if itself were a part of the mountain stone.

The dragon lowered its long neck, brought its calm visage between us three, and spoke with a voice as soft as the roots of the earth, " **Bo wah fin ven, hi voth ni tinvaak.** "

The smaller dragon gazed into its smiling golden eyes, and without any response took some steps into the snow and leapt into the winds, flapping its wings and disappearing into the blizzard.

That mountain of a dragon slowly shifted its huge visage to me; the golden light smiling in its eyes was the same I'd seen before – a timeless joy of ancient peace; as if the morning of Mundus yet dawned in the depths of that bottomless light. I could not say if it studied me, or waited for a gesture; calmly it regarded me, exerting no pressure or fear. It laid its front claw right in front of me, and startled me still by speaking our tongue, " **Climb upon my talon, Helenita – and you Lydia, join with her.** "

She sheathed her sword and ran to me, stepped in my way and held me fast, not letting me move. Feverishly she measured the dragons visage. Her temples were covered in sweat, her gaze focused and controlled, if bewildered – how valiant she was, even now trying to do what she thought right – protecting me, against the terrible, unjust advantage of the dragons size and strength.

"Noble dragon… H-how did you know our names?" I stuttered in awe, allowing Lydia to hold me still.

" **A dragon has many ways of knowing the true names of the living and the un-living. Why now I read it in your eyes, Helenita – and Lydia I learned from her loud thoughts. Be at ease, Lydia – I'm not here to smite you or to harm your mistress, nor harm any of your kin. Join with me, and I'll take you atop the throat of our world**."

Lydia would not budge, and the dragon waited still, smiling at us both. For a long time she kept me still, well past the high of the recent adrenaline, 'til that sweat grew freezing cold against my skin. "Trust me," I whispered in her ear, shaking, and pushed her lightly. She faltered on her feet, but succumbed wordlessly, stepping cautiously upon its claw and hoisting me besides her. We wound our arms around its metal scales, bracing for takeoff.

All this time the dragon waited unmoving, patient as if it had an entire age of the world to spare for us.

"Noble dragon," I had the courage to speak, "Do your kin know our tongue?"

" **My kin knows every tongue of mer and men. The tongues of rivers and trees we know, and the tongues of rocks and rain, and all the tongues of the winds and the seas – but Mundus has changed, and even our kin grows dim in the heart and mind – some know now no tongue at all.** "

It leapt lightly into the air like a giant cat, the claw beneath us perfectly still, and not even the wind tried prying us off our seat; the blizzard left us in a void, obeying the wings and the will of the dragon instead.

With frightening speed the ground beneath us grew far, and we were flying far above the face of the earth. Lydia hugged me and the scales with all her strength, nearly suffocating my breath, but I protested not; she was white with dread like me – but for me the splendor and majesty of the dragon blunted the worst of my scare; I knew we were safe despite all.

In breathtaking heights where the clouds were our sisters it floated on the high winds of the world unknown to all mer and men, " **There are winds here I recognize not, Helenita. Can you name them?** "

I concentrated on the winds – utterly incomprehensible to me, and knew not what to say; not that my voice could've even carried across those tempests. But the dragon needed not my words, " **There is a net upon this world, young Helenita, and it is coming loose. Outside, there is a vastness that cannot be, and may only become – in times past a parcel of this vastness became what is. If the world forgets its name, then what is will again become what can be.** "

The dragon landed on an even plane of snow right beside the very highest peak of Hrothgar's rock.

" **Here, daughters – by that carved wall of stone there blows no wind."**

There on the edge of the cliff that oversaw the whole world, a man-made wall at least ten feet tall stood half covered in a cold pallid dust. The dragon laid us onto that snow and then began curling its infinite body and neck into a bundle around the wall, enclosing us both between that smooth stone and its plated scales. From its body there emanated the warmth of a furnace and an anvils iron smell. Finally its entire length had wrapped us and the wall, and in front of us it laid its colossal head, " **I will divulge you my true name: Paarthurnax. Now we are met.** "

After that Paarthurnax said nothing, but looked now at Lydia, now at me. I could sense her uneasiness, her darting eyes that clearly worded some machinations of fleeing the dragons body.

" **Pardon me, Lydia. I do not always sense time.** "

With an ancient laughter in its narrow, sun-lit eyes, Paarthurnax peered now into me, " **Some clouds and winds told me of a peculiar spirit that now treads the soil – but they would not describe me you, yet I know that the southern and the western and eastern winds told of you. They said: peculiar, peculiar – how the eye of our world is now a mortal and a human. But before I speak any more, I'll teach you, Helenita, to converse with the winds.** "

"Excuse me, your thrice gracious highness; I was sent unto this mountain to seek audience with the Greybeards – are you with the Greybeards?"

" **I am.** "

"Then I will do as you say, noble Paarthurnax."

* * *

/ Please drop reviews I don't even know if this is comprehensible. Also I'm a poor beggar and have 0 reviews. Be brutal and don't show any mercy.


	6. Chapter 6

_I had no sense of dread in the embrace of Paarthurnax' beastly forms – ah, I had a deep seated joy as you do at the beginning of a friendship. I thought I was in a bed-side tale; one with talking dragons and lessons on speaking with the winds. Lydia stared at me mutely, clearly knowing not what way to be, and so chose not to be at all, becoming a statue – you see, something happened atop the mountain, something which I at the time hardly noticed or would've understood: I think no time passed at all. Paarthurnax gestured towards the wall with its glimmering eyes, and there beneath the veil of snow some worn runes glowed with a frozen blue light. And as I stared, did I sink into those syllables, like peering into a well that reached all the way to the spoke bones of the earth itself. And within those depths, wherever I looked, to the left or to the right, towards the heavens or towards my toes, I saw not the world at all, and all of it at once, written in the stone and yet lingering everywhere that is, was, and will be: they were not a tongue to be learned but a list of names for everything there is – there was the name of the snow and all the clouds, and there the names of every wind and tempest. I'd sink in eternally, swimming in pulsating ether of being itself, and no matter which way I went, they read differently: from below and above, from front and rear and every dimension the human sense can grasp. I did not have to study them: they spoke themselves to me. Wherever I looked, the names of the world would surround me, and I thought I was no human at all, but a tiny little speck of astral existence that shapes itself into every living and lifeless being. "_ _ **It was I who summoned you – my brother Mirmulnir visited here and told me of a young human whom he, Mirmulnir, called mother. He said that in the dimness of the world a tiny grain of waking dream had caught the light of his eyes, like a brightly flickering spark floating above an ashen sea. If this is true, and if what I see is true, then it is by some force yond my comprehension that has set you on this stage. I fear our eldest brother, Alduin, has awakened – and that you two must play a scene that has been played since the first of dawns. You need not learn all – I cannot tell you more, for I think yourself will write this play.**_ _"_

 _"_ _Tell me of your eldest brother, Alduin."_

 _"_ _ **Alduin is a primordial force, set in motion by a body far larger than himself – we who are what is, cannot comprehend that which can only become: so this force manifests into a living shape that our senses can perceive. Your kin sometime called Alduin the devourer of worlds. This is wise. This is the struggle for existence. When our senses cannot shape a parcel of true chaos into a structure where consciousness can capture abstractions and name them, we dissolve – and return to our only mother: the bed of chaos. Your kin fears this darkness – and we who are, must struggle against it: in this your kin is right. But chaos cannot be evil. It is the womb of all, from whence our life and love is born, from whence our fears and woes are born: even our knowledge of good and evil comes from her bosom. No fire, no matter how bright and fierce, will not someday splutter and fade. But then from the darkness and the ashes a new flame will ignite, sporting a new consciousness, a new existence.**_ _"_

 _"_ _And I am to play a role in this? Why? I'm a mortal – a daughter of men and mer: what good are my limbs against the strength of a dragon? What is my mind to a being that is of the roots of the world?"_

 _"_ _ **I do not know. I cannot help you yet. Perhaps you need not fight Alduin. Perhaps you need but name him. No mind, no matter how small or great, can contend with the reign of chaos, the unknown. That is our struggle. When you name your fear, when your eyes give the darkness a shape, it becomes imprisoned in light – and then your powers are even**_ _._ _ **This is my counsel. You, as a grain of that same chaos yourself, have the means and might to force an ether of nothingness into a shape we can conceive. Perhaps you need to study and to learn, and perhaps you need neither of those – perhaps you must wait in silence and let this world unfold itself, until it crawls to you, soft and warm, malleable to your will.**_ _"_

 _"_ _Is not every being in existence a part of this same darkness, then? Must I be alone in this?"_

 _"_ _ **You are not alone. We are one. How it is that you seem to be the piece that sets all in motion - that I do not know. It may be that your mind or heart has a depth that is unnaturally gifted to perceive and to sense. It might be not because of a divine will that chose you, but because by being born yourself shattered the world. This struggle is not a struggle of strength, but a struggle of our senses: that which creates the world.**_ _"_

 _"_ _Then how do you know I am not Alduin?"_

 _Paarthurnax flicked its eyes with a mild hilarity, "_ _ **I do not know. If that is true, then you must name yourself, or perish and disintegrate into a void that swallows our Mundus. Breathe, Helenita. Within the names these runes now have taught you, the winds will unfold themselves – I think you have the ear to hear their murmurs and whispers. There will be no messenger better suited to reach me or my kin. I, Paarthurnax, and my brother, Mirmulnir, you now know by name.**_ _"_

* * *

Paarthurnax began unreeling its magnificent body, setting us free to the world, " **A path descends from here to the monastery, where your priests await you by my bidding. I would tell you to walk in the snow and to see the beauty of our world. And then wait in the monastery. Wait, Helenita. Mastery is patience. Listen, and observe – yourself will know what is true, and what must be done. This will be the measure of your power."**

Lydia flinched at my side. There might have been a spell on her face. She was docile and mute, and dizzily knuckled her eyes, following me like a pet.

" **Bid Magnus show you our world, Helenita.** "

Those words that rolled off my tongue came without a thought, as easily as your heart goes on beating from day to day; I spoke them softly, with a motherly tenderness that suddenly filled my chest: " _Lok… Vah… Koor…"_

The winds ceased their courses, and the clouds made way, parting the heavens for Magnus' rays. And there far below in the lower world the lesser mountains shone in the noon, embraced by misty clouds flowing down their slopes which slowly faded in the suns heat upon the pine tree woods and the meadows and tundra fields. Even Dragonsreach was but a small, small house atop the hill of Whiterun, like a wayfarer's cabin amidst even smaller, tiny thatched huts.

The path took us to a monastery built of stone standing right on the ledge of cliffs. There by bronzed doors four robed priests, aged men with long beards, welcomed us with a modest bow and without uttering a word. Here Lydia seemed to regain her self, and grew at once pale with a reverent fear at the sight of those masters.

Then one of the old men spoke, "Our grandmaster told us of your coming. Welcome, Helenita. I am Arngeir. My brethren here will not breach their vows of silence, and will not speak with you. They are the masters Borri, Wulfgar, and Einarth."

"What would you have me do, masters? Your grandmaster told us to wait here, but said nothing more. We were sent here to learn why the dragons have returned to our world."

"Then wait you must. We heard your voice that scattered the clouds. We do not need to teach you more: wait, and listen. Come, I'll show you to your chambers."

In the cold columned hallways Arngeir said something more, "The dragons have always lived in our world, flying in the upmost winds of our world, and on the farthest seas beyond our knowing. But now some of them return to the lower winds of Tamriel. What this means, only our grandmaster knows."

* * *

Within those chambers and on the monastery courtyard we spent days, sitting on a floor of stone or pacing on the snow, standing by the ledge on the throat of the world. What was it that Paarthurnax or the Greybeards hoped me to learn, I was not sure – I spent those days listening to the winds, and studying Lydia. After her nervousness had diminished she seemed to be at peace in our silence, content in lying on a table of stone, feet crossed and staring to the ceiling for hours to an end. While I could listen to the tales of all the winds of the world, she remained impenetrable. All my attempts of following her eyes into the same distance were in vain. She would look into the horizon, towards some blind spot on the far seas where I could not join her.

In the evenings Arngeir would sometimes grace us with his tales, recounting age old histories of wars long since fought, of mankinds struggle against the madness of dragons. Then had they, these winged deities that had once been worshipped as Gods, lost their temper and their spirits, and had warred with all the living things of Nirn to reduce this our world to cinders. The now nameless heroes of Nords had then banished the leader of dragons, Alduin, by profane means that had ensured an uncertain peace on this world: they'd read upon an Elder Scroll, and trapped Alduin in a maze of time. Now, they feared that Alduin had found his way from this maze, and had returned to finish his task – to set dawn to a new Kalpa – to recreate Mundus by swallowing it whole. They'd heard from the winds that an unseemly power had raised age old dragons from their graves of soil; dragons that had once perished by the hands of men.

But a word on the winds: they hummed their stories of a thousand years, told me of all the waves of every ocean, of every crook and crevice in every mountain that stands, and even of those that have fallen; all storms they remembered, joyously recounting all the battles of adverse gales and gusts, and what mages and wizards had once ushered them to sink ships and fleets, or unleashed their might on the plains and fields. They remembered every dragon that had once reigned together with them, but the names of dragons were secret even to the winds; every other name they knew and could retell. To amuse me, they even told of a child Helenita, who'd stood upon the sands of Summerset shores, longing to drift from the world in their embrace. Even of a certain regal altmer they told, who'd whispered hidden dreams of love to the same sea-born winds. And once they felt how those fragments of a lost affection pained me, would not cease teasing my heart with them. Bitterly I turned to the mundane world, and grew bitter still at the sight of beautiful Lydia – my standing with her was hardly any less disadvantageous than with my altmer crush years and years ago. And more so I cursed myself, that each dusk and every dawn, before and after all death in love, knowing and unknowing a thousand faces, my frailty should all endure, never growing a skin any thicker, never withering nor fading: I'd see a glimpse of her shapes, and I'd shiver in adoration by the sheer grace of her motion, subjected by accursed Dibella and Mara. No remedy but solitude would aid suffering her presence – I'm delirious, am I? I lose my tongue, my mind and my heart for all they are worth because some Daedra has made these senses of mine shake with reverent sighs in sight of her shapes, why would they twine the design of my soul to so desperately swoon over these arbitrary forms unless to torment, and if I be of heavens, how could the Daedra create something that pales the mountains and the seas, that gripes me with overwhelming sweetness and with an aura commands my blood and belies my will.

That night would be our last night on Hrothgar, for that petty and foolish bitterness would not leave me. In our chamber I confronted her without weighing my thoughts before uttering them: "Lydia."

She lay on her bed of stone, and turned her head slowly to me.

"Why do you hate me?"

Her stare was impregnable, heavy and hard in the dim light of the lone candle on the table separating our beds.

"When you first met me, you smiled and showed me courtesy – but once he made you my housecarl, your smile died. What did I do?"

"Stop it."

"Stop what? Are you afraid of words?"

"Your eyes give away more than you'd think."

I froze, thinking I'd been exposed. In the darkness of the room she couldn't have seen my reddened face, "What do you mean?"

"Your misfortunes don't belong with me."

How could she know?! A dread gripped my heart, how much had she seen by merely looking into my eyes? Did she mean what I thought she did? "You still didn't answer me," I stuttered, trying to brush it off.

"Call it superstition if you want, but I don't trust mages. I will do what I'm sworn to do, and nothing more. I did not choose to serve a foreign noble, nor a wizard. If you must know: I'm not happy about this. But that is unimportant."

She turned away, and I sat there for a long silent while, biting my tongue, feeling powerless and miserable. I'd had enough. I'd turn to Savos, learn what he wanted from me and then be on my way. Blast it all.

I left when Lydia had fallen asleep. I ran to the courtyard, slogged in the snow, now thick after snowfall, and performed a foolish stunt, careless whether I'd be strong enough to make it all the way or not – I began descending the slopes of the mountain right towards Ivarstead, aiding with alteration where I could not find footing. At first I had to levitate almost constantly, and when I say levitate, it is nothing akin to the levitation the masters of alteration can cast, right running in the air, feets and feets above the ground – my spells were more like tip toeing on the surface of the winds, only for the least possible amount of shy little steps to reach the next footing. At least, this way the spell itself was light to be cast. Lower down the slope I needed resort to my magic only here and there, less and less frequently, until eventually not at all. I reached the village before dawn, cold, sweating and exhausted, but would not stay for more than a short and restless sleep, afraid I'd again be caught.

On the days to follow I urged Vienne to test her strength, riding hard from dawn 'til dusk. One miserable night I spent starving in the woods. By the second, I was already at Darkwater. Soon I was back on the northern road that leads towards the city of Windhelm. Viennes feet were a thing to marvel once they had a solid road or even some hard soil underneath; tight like the strings of a violin, and strong beyond comprehension. What a horse she was – and is. All fire – explosive as dwemer powder – and stately as a queen. Untiring, enduring, obedient, whatever you might put her to. When Vienne stepped at a walking pace, it was like being lulled asleep in a nurse's arms; when she trotted, it was like rocking at sea. When she galloped, she outstripped the wind! Never out of breath, perfectly sound in her wind. Sinews of steel: for her to stumble was a thing never recorded. Her hooves never clattered, her trod did not skip – she floated on the ground, effortless and proud. And how wise she was! At her mistress' voice she'd run with her head high in the air, and if I told her to stand still and walked away from her, she'd not stir, only some time faint a neigh to say: "Here I am!"

I could so lightly brush aside the past few days as if they never were - a stature to my monumental naivety that let me believe the words of a dragon concerned me not if I thought them not. This was a skill I'd harbored since my earliest years – hiding. Hiding from the world and myself. I needed nothing more but the road and the joy of Vienne's beauty, and my own selfish little thoughts, thinking I'd finish with Aren within some days at most, my interest in his mysterious invitation waning by the sinking sun.

Late at dusk I reached the gates of Windhelm.


	7. Chapter 7

Windhelm, though prone to xenophobia under present tensions, took no notice of a single passing Breton. My ethnicity was lost in the unrest concerning both the dunmers and imperials, and so I could spend one lazy day at Candlehearth Hall. Moreover I had to, for I'm no athlete, and the sleepless nights and the distance we'd covered in those days had ensured all my muscles were sore and aching.

Now Kyne knows by what intervention I forsook using the road to west, instead setting upon the less travelled path that started directly towards north. Perhaps because at the time I half expected for Lydia to jump on me at any moment, despite knowing she'd never have kept Viennes pace. And it was exactly on this lesser, dead snow-road, upon which I should never have embarked on, that winter caught me.

You see, I had severely underestimated the amount of snow in summer, and the harshness of Skyrim's climate – I was blissfully unaware what cruelties nature was capable of even in her most lenient season. And that nearly led me and poor Vienne to a pitiful death amidst a blizzard. For on the same night of our parting from Windhelms gates we were caught by a snowstorm on the icy hills of Winterhold-county.

A drizzle of snow in late evening had abruptly angered when the gales from inland had lashed against our backs. That wind pierced fur and silk, bit into bones as mercilessly as a rabid dog, and when it twirled against me it stole breath from the air, causing me to gasp for life from another direction. Numbed by the cold, and watching the snow climb up Vienne's shaking legs higher and higher every trodden hoofing it became evident that continuing would mean the end of us both. So we huddled into a crevice in the mountainside, hoping the blizzard would subside before dawn. Everything was buried under snow, and the sole warmth I could create was a flame kindling in my fists, strengthened into a combustive ball of fire with a spell-effort utterly unsustainable for periods longer than the time passed between reading this word and the next.

And those extortions only thawed the crusted snow on my robes, wetting them and gluing the freezing textile against my skin like a wraiths lick. I could nothing but cry, terrified like never before - only Vienne's despondent, dull gaze into the endless night got me to fight, for myself I would not have had the heart. After what felt like hours, but what cannot have been more than a brief moment, when my reserves were utterly spent and drained and I had already slumped back against rock, shuddering and bereft of any courage, falling into a frozen sleep of death, Vienne startled from her watch. I looked up to her with eyes blurry from tears, but at once realizing her pricked ears and that her shivers were held by tensed muscles. The blizzard was dying down, and though that wouldn't have saved us anymore, I squinted my eyes, concentrating on any shifting outline amidst the snowfall. ' _Perhaps a tundra wraith…?'_ , my thoughts ran to aid my fear, and in feverish impulse I sent a ray of flames into the dusty darkness with some reserve of strength I didn't even know I still possessed, and that streak of light for a flash revealed a humans figure. Before I could utter a syllable for light the human appeared right in front of me, tall, and deft in snow, too deft for me, and strong; I couldn't even scream before I was bound in those arms.

"Found you, vixen…" She sizzled into my ear.

In a heartbeat I recognised the voice, and wound my arms around Lydia's waist, hard and with as shameless desperation as a drowning hugging flotsam.

"You capering fool, look at what you've gotten yourself into – Stupid, stupid Heartlander…" Lydia scolded me with a vexed voice colder than the snow.

I tried to speak, but only a whimper came out from my mouth, lost to the loudness of the wind. She wrapped her fur cloak around me and held me tight, swaying me in her arms. Divines I was lucky to be trapped by her again – out of all the beasts and bandits that could have ended me, it was her.

"How did you find me! How did you even…" I hissed against her shoulder, body trembling from the cold that only grew worse now that her presence reminded me of warmth.

"Not too difficult. You thought nobody would take note of a Breton in Windhelm? It's half a miracle you weren't thrown out of the town with your robes and southern tongue."

"Are you angry?" I whispered, resisting as she pulled me her way.

"That's none of your business," she replied bluntly, and forcibly tugged me with her.

Lydia's northern roan had thick fur and stood in the snow like on its own lawn, completely undaunted by the frigid gusts. She fetched a water skin from her saddlebags and shoved the mouthpiece between my lips. The spirits was crude and raw; burning my innards like nothing before. After a mouthful I choked, spilling it over her chest, but she forced it back against my gritted teeth. The flame suffused my blood, and the euphoria that came with the fiery warmth rose to my head in unison with drunkenness; doubly intoxicated I lost any and all words. Chest bursting with sudden relief I knew only to cling to her, and she indulged, wrapping us together inside her ample fur cape.

"We are in luck. Look – the blizzard is dying down… It will turn colder soon."

"Colder? In luck…?" I slurred against her chest, anxious.

"Yes, simpleton, clouds mean snowfall, and snowfall means wet. But clear skies mean cold, and cold means dry. No amount of clothing will save you if you're soaked – You are done for if we can't get you dry – come…" She pushed us apart and started to tear my robes, "Help me, get yourself naked."

"Naked…?"

"Do as I say!"

Too drunk to feel the cold even against bare skin I climbed out from my loosened robes, stupefied whilst she rummaged the saddlebags, and trying in vain to untie my underdress. She turned to me and took a split moment feeling the textile for dampness, then tore it straight apart, right after gripping the waistline of my underwear, shredding them off too with one fierce yank, leaving me stark naked. I'd gone from sober to absolutely smashed with no steps in between, and so hadn't the faintest notion to be ashamed by my nudity; her industrious fierceness only looked amusing to me. I submit to her touching, or rather wasn't sober enough to even take note of it as she helped me fit in her spare pants and shirt, both of which were too large for me but by the waist; I giggled as she cursed, struggling with pulling the pants past my hips. She then wrapped me in a cloak alike hers and seized me back into a hard embrace, "Pain in fingers or toes?"

"No pain, madam wolf, none at all- Hey d-don't go yet! Hold me!"

But she had none of my tattling, already pulling me towards the horses who had found one another, "Shut your trap - let's get you up."

Vienne had snuggled against Lydia's horse for warmth, the latter standing as calm as ever, casually eyeing her approaching mistress, and seemingly completely oblivious that a mare was shivering against its flank.

Once she had moved all weight on Vienne's saddling, she pushed me atop her mount, lending not one ear to my protests, then climbed on the saddle behind me and held the reins against my belly, "We'll go first; your Cyrodilean will follow in the trail-"

"Hammerfellian." I dizzily corrected her, reclining against her bosom, very comfortable on her broad backed steed.

She said nothing for a while, and when the drowsiness started overwhelming me, causing my head to hitch and droop forwards, she tightened her embrace, "Sleep. I'll keep you right there."

"Yes sir. Woman. Wolf." I muttered half asleep, aware of but indifferent to the invisible tension in her rigid posture and arms; a steadiness maintained by force of will against ill temper.

She woke me up once we had joined the main road. Her brave roan was sweating and panting heavily after carrying both of us and mowing the snow for the whole long climb. She moved both our belongings on her saddles, and we mounted Vienne, who was now warmed up but still quite fresh. Aside one supercilious snort she expressed no objections when Lydia climbed on the saddles instead of me, for though she normally would let none top her but me, she is a wise animal and had well perceived Lydia was taking care of her sick mistress. And her fine, strong legs again proved invaluable once they had gotten a sturdy road underneath them. Even though I'd already slept some time cradled on her lap, she had me sleep for the two next legs of the journey as well, forfeiting all rest herself and waking me up only when we'd pause to swap horses. The final leg we rode both on our own mounts, neither of us uttering a word for a long time. But that was fine. I had a headache, and a fever, and my whole body was aching from what felt like an endless ride. Lydia must have been worn as well, though she showed no signs but dark circles around her cold eyes. And if we were wretched, so were our poor horses with their drooping heads and their steady and audible panting. So we traveled really slowly, for though we were almost in Winterhold we both seemed to share the notion that taxing those loyal animals to a point of trauma was out of the question. The scenery opening to us towards the sea lifted my faded spirits; the coast remained unfrozen, a dark blue sea glimmering in the sun, with all the cliffs and beaches covered by intact snow, dazzling the eye, and all reflecting on the rough surfaces of glacier chunks; snow joined by blues from the sea and the skies, an azure paradise so splendid that should I have had a whole day, or an entire week of time to stand by and stare, I could not have sated the human hunger for such beautiful sights, the hunger that causes us – partly in vain – to try and immortalize and possess that beauty, because we don't have the heart to simply let it go.

Later, Lydia breached the silence, "Let's ease the load, come- "

She leapt down and we shifted all the carryings back on her horse, and the remaining mile or two she'd lead it on foot. "She is a fine animal," Lydia then noted once we got moving, glancing at Vienne approvingly, if even a bit jealously.

"Her name is Vienne," I said, petting her mane and neck, quite pleased with Lydia's remark, "A full-blood Hammerfellian, a truly royal lady; her kind are worth fortunes – and well worth every penny and much more, she's a dear friend too-"

"Next time think of her feelings then, before you attempt suicide."

Her comment caused a twinge under my chest, and made me flush out of shame- why did I babble such and such again? And she was right, most of all I had wronged Vienne by being so selfish. I kept my mouth tightly shut so no more stupidities would bubble out. I felt I'd also betrayed Lydia for the second time, and mistreated again that graveness she upheld regarding her honor; that which seemed to me mysterious and caused me to treat it with utmost reverence as with all foreign rituals that are undertaken with severity but which you don't quite understand and so give reign to imagination that quickly embellishes the sanctity of those veiled traditions.

But my fear of saying something dumb was overcome by the embarrassment her rebuttal put me in. "I'm sorry-" I began, but she cut me short.

"I don't want your sorry."

"Well, then thank you… You saved my-"

"No. Just shut up."

"What?" I peeped, confused.

"Look here, princess, as long as you give me word – one that I can trust; but don't give it now! – That you'll resolve what the Greybeards tasked you with, I'll remain quiet and keep on stopping you from getting yourself killed, as many times as I can before you succeed, as you seem hell-bent on that."

Her crudeness demolished all my faltering confidence. "Alright…" I stammered so quietly it was only a whisper, knowing not how to answer. Yet - ' _Alright?!_ ' Who even says that after being insulted to the face? Only a pathetic wimp, or indeed a lost duchess in the wilderness, stripped of all her false prestige. Who had ever said a bad word to me? In school there were only social peers, and in 'adult life', in the college in Imperial City, I was but a lecturer and a researcher, and something of an oddity within that community, treated with silk gloves as if I'd break to pieces otherwise, and they were probably right. The only contact with the real world had been my two year stay in the far east, then had I been under the tutelage of one Telvanni master, and that was no contact at all for the Telvanni shield themselves from the rest of the world as keenly as the conservative Altmers in Summerset. There had I been spared from the roughness of vulgar social conduct too, for though Telvanni care little for courtesy and politeness, they care even less for words themselves, and so will rather curse inwardly and then forget than to waste time expressing their discontent.

So we walked on, again quiet. Not some moments later and I couldn't endure her silence, still feeling like I had to explain myself, "You know… I asked for none of this."

She sighed heavily, and when she then spoke her voice revealed all weariness, "I know. Let's just get to Winterhold, and sleep."

"Is it yours?" I beckoned her stooping horse.

"No. He's not mine. Soldiers can't afford horses." And when I thought she had nothing more to say, after a stretch explained with a milder voice, "He's one of Whiteruns herd. Sadko is his name. Also, look –"

She pointed yonder, and I could sight a party of three figures facing us farther on the road, suddenly emerged from beyond the curve of the hilly land. Three tall figures cloaked in black, dismounted, and waiting.

Up close there was no mistaking them: Altmers. Not natives – but from some embassy.

"Dismount," Lydia whispered to me. "We can't run anyway if they want something."

"Halt!" A woman's high pitched voice ordered us once we were within a dozen feet. "Helenita?"

"Who's asking?" Lydia shouted back before I could collect myself, and immediately continued in whisper, "Stay, Vienne."

To my amazement she'd obey Lydia, and stood still.

"Not your business, Nord," the woman scoffed. She was accompanied by two men, armed with elven blades and clad in mail.

"Then you'll stand aside and let us pass. Go search someplace else."

"And who's this Breton, then?" she asked, staring at me with her large amber eyes.

"Helenita." I said quickly, earning from Lydia a murderous look.

The mer smirked, "I'm Culumaire, your servant. Niraniya sent us. You're to come home with us."

"Niraniya…?" I stammered, my heart beating rampantly at the mere mention of the name that had for years laid dormant in my heart.

"To Solitude, for starters – there are matters the Dominion wants to discuss with you, Helenita." She eyed Lydia pitifully, "Your lackey may come with you, if you so desire."

"Not so fast, elf," Lydia spat, "Who said she has any desire to come with you herself."

She disregarded Lydia entirely, speaking only to me, "Tell that thing to calm down. I'm sorry that I have to force your hand in this way. This incursion, and all griefs you have suffered shall with speed be redressed – But you will not decline Niraniya. Come with us to the civilized world, away from this frozen dung of filth."

I was too scared to say a word now, well knowing who she meant, and how they truly would not let me choose. My inaction had all Oblivion break loose. Lydia drew her blade and walked brashly in front of those three, all weariness fallen from her shoulders, and speaking words seething with hatred, "She's not coming with you. Get from my sights or I'll end you."

The woman crossed her arms, and spoke softly like a cat, "Take her down."

What I then had to witness shook my soul to the core; Lydias fierceness was explosive beyond any of our senses – in a blink she transformed from a human into a nether beast: faster than my eyes could see her blade was buried in the chest of the altmer soldier, sunken into flesh through the gap of his shoulder and mail. Her face became drenched in dark blood, her eyes gleaming brighter than sun on the snow – they were radiant with a lunatic light; a burning thirst for blood, and rage. Everything happened in a matter of a few terrified heartbeats: She hid behind the dying mer stuck in her blade, absorbing the blinding projectile conjured by the woman's fingers, simultaneously reaching her free hand to catch the other altmers whistling blade. She gripped that sword in her palm, stopping it in the air like it had hit stone – the terrifying beauty of it: their tall silhouettes against dawn, Lydias fist forcing the blade still with unnatural strength, her own blood flowing upon that shining sword, painting it with streams of red - and she would only roar in unrestrained laughter. Leaning forward she shoved her first victim against the man so forcefully the body parted from her blade, and the man tumbled down on the snow beneath the limp corpse. She leapt like a starving wolf towards the woman, who had another projectile readied in her fists – but she would not cast it: Lydias bloody hand grasped her face too fast, and she thrust her blade through her stomach, letting loose of the handle on that same instant, only to thrust even that hand into the womans face. Lydias own body, back towards me, sheltered my eyes from what she did, but the piercing scream was the most horrifying I'd ever heard: the woman fell limp in her arms, and holding the elf's head in both her hands, Lydia smashed it against a rock on the ground with all her might. The sound of cracking skull had my guts turn upside down. The other man had climbed up from beneath the body, and now with a furious grunt slashed his blade towards the crouched Lydia, hitting her broadly on the back so viciously her spine should've snapped right there and then. Lydia fell even lower, all breath kicked from her lungs, gasping and growling - but she would not stop laughing. Undaunted by that strike she bounced from her crouching stance, shoulder first towards the man on her side before he could rebalance for another blow, tackling him down, and wrestled with him in the bloodied snow. In a blink she had a knife in her hand, and in another it was hilt-deep in his gurgling throat. And yet she wouldn't be done - with her fists she battered her opponents face until his legs ceased kicking, and he lay completely motionless.

Slowly she stood up, covered in blood and gasping for air, but laughing, madly as a ravenous beast. There wasn't a trace of human in her flaming eyes, only an animal, who even took me for prey. That wild, insatiable glare she placed on me right bound me in place, freezing every trace of me with a dread that pierced my being. I knew then how a lost child must feel in the face of a hungry and mindless woodland beast, staring a gruesome death in the eye, bereft of any mercy or compassion – eyes like a human has, but now utterly inhuman, full of murder and without a trace of pity.

"Stop it…" I sobbed, staggering a step or two, and collapsed on my back, crying. A flood of tears clouded my sights, and next I felt her arms on my shoulders, barely recognizing them for the hands of a human. I crept away from her touch and huddled in the snow, bawling my eyes out.

She let me cry all my tears, and let me shudder on the frigid ground with once my eyes were dry and tearless. She rummaged the bodies lying in the crimson snow, and finally sat down by my side in silence, and waited.

"It's not quite so bad, really. Now you've seen it. Haven't you?" She paused for a bit to study her torn palm, "Tears are no harm, and now you've cried for it, too. The sun is still the sun, and the world the same it was. This is nothing more than what every hare or fawn or sheep does know, and has always known, so why shouldn't you?"

She'd cut a piece of the altmer's black robes, and bandaged her palm to at least conceal her open wound. She sighed, her breathing growing heavy. "I do not mock you. But the snow will bite your bones, and I'm bleeding more than would be good. Up, up, my thane. You'll have time enough to scold me and the world in a bed. Winterhold is right past the cliff."

She stood up, huffing from the effort, and pulled me up on my trembling legs.

"Wash me with snow, Helenita. I can't go into town all covered in blood."

Mutely I filled her plea, cupping handfuls of snow in my numbed palms, rubbing her vestments as best I could. She took my hands in hers, and with tenderness now from the opposite world, buried her face in my palms, moving them over her brows, her sharp nose, her chin and her cheeks, so lightly and gently that in my mortified heart she ignited, despite all, a faint little spark of life. The stains of blood came off her pale skin, but that was not why she held me so; she was lost in that touch, as if trying to remember something that seemed to turn her soft, something which mellowed at once the beastliness that had right absorbed her a mere moment ago. An immense pity soon overwhelmed my being, and I thought to caress the tangled fur of a scarred and bloodied wolf, now released from the curse of blood. I sunk into that emotion like into a deep filled well, knowing nothing else, and tried clumsily closing her into an embrace. That startled her, and she gently pushed my hands down, stumbling a step backwards, a rosy red painting her cold face, and she gave me a brief little glance, with eyes I'd not yet seen: they were all round and soft, without a surface of ice, open and so weak my own weightless gaze could've sunken into her depths had she not at once close her lids and broken away.

She gritted her teeth, breathing hard and heavy, "Help me… My back… I'll lean to Sadko."

She allowed me to take her the waist, and walked stiffly, panting, a cold sweat glistening on her face.

The remaining distance went painfully slow. Lydia leaned to Sadko, and seemed to spend all her strength to keep herself from groaning aloud, eyes half closed, her walking getting worse and worse by the moment.

"You'll have to let me see your back in Winterhold," I said quietly.

She coughed, and her breathing wavered, but she said nothing.

The crumbled battlements of old Winterholds fortifications were near, and she ironed herself, straightened her back and walked completely straight, face deathly pale and like stone, giving away nothing of her pain.

We took care of the stabling in wordless co-operation, calmly and conscientiously, our fatigue nor her pain hurrying our hands. She shoved me away when I tried aiding her, "Let it go. Just help me to the inn, and get me some proper spirits."


	8. Chapter 8

_I could've taken her straight to the college grounds, but I had not the heart to meet the looks of my colleagues, nor to lie through their questions. The innkeeper eyed us rather suspiciously; two wretched figures in ragged cloaks, hardly standing on our feet, as if we'd embarked into a sunny noon straight from a deep-winters blizzard. But he kept his mouth shut and rented us a room. Lydia collapsed on the bed at once, murmuring nonsense with a low indolent voice. I helped her down a vase of spirits, after which she seemed to regain a little life. I made no questions, and she made no resistance as I wordlessly began undoing the knots on her vestments, unstrapping all straps and bands and belts. No, she'd merely look at me as I worked, causing even so an aching sweat to rise on my skin, and my fingers to grow more uncertain the closer they were to removing her vest, and, trembling, even her shirt, until the only cover she had was the tightly wrapped bandage over her breasts. I tried my best to not even notice her forms, which were clear enough spite her rugged frame._

 _"_ _Turn," I said, and she obliged, with some apparent unwillingness shifting her eyes from me. Even that minutiae gesture caused my heart to flutter._

 _I couldn't hold a weak gasp as I saw her back – a purple and black line went across her lower back from side to side; and more – her entire back was filled with old scars, and it made me shiver to think how she'd earned them all._

 _If her discs were dislocated, there'd be nothing I could do. For mending injuries like that takes more than an ordinary mage. In the college they'd perhaps have someone proficient enough in the school of restoration, but to alleviate her pain I could at least place my palms over her bruise, and send a warmth through her skin that would release her muscles and heat the congealed blood. Her scarred skin, despite it might've looked cold liked marble, was smooth and soft._

 _She moaned at the sensation of my spell penetrating her flesh, and her own heat gave me a start too; a ray of warmth that surged through my fingertips hovering on her back, barely touching, right into my bosom. I laid my hands flat on her back, and the faint pulsating of her blood made my mind misty. "What are you doing…?"_

 _"_ _Trying to heal you," I blurted quickly. Too quickly._

 _"_ _Alright," she flinched, reaching for my wrists, "that's enough."_

 _"_ _What…?"_

 _"_ _I don't want your spells. It's fine."_

 _"_ _But it's not-"_

 _"_ _It is. Now stop." She huffed, and rolled on her side._

 _"_ _Be that way then," I muttered, and sat on the bed beside her._

 _"_ _What about the bodies?" I said after a while. I'd rather not have thought of it, but that worry had grown too deep to be ignored._

 _"_ _I know," she whispered, "Nothing we can do. Don't worry about that. Some passer-by will bury them sooner or later – there's no love for Altmers here. Trust me, someone will bury them in fear of anyone with the embassy witnessing them first – if Solitude heard of it, there'd be an inquisition here the next week. Nobody wants that to happen."_

 _"_ _Why did you do it?"_

 _"_ _Do what?"_

 _"_ _I could've talked our way out of it," I lied. "Now they'll come searching for Culumaire."_

 _"_ _Friend of yours?" She coughed sardonically. "Let them search, then. Will take them a while."_

 _"_ _No friend of mine. You could've waited for me to express my own wishes to her."_

 _"As if I'd let you do that. What? Why do you look me so - you think I'd let you scurry to the Dominion and let them use you?"_

 _"Use me? How do you know why they sought me?"_

 _"Is it not obvious? Don't think half the nation hasn't heard the rumors from Whiterun by now - I don't know through what history they know you - don't try to pretend you're without ties - But any purblind eye could seek it out. You, if anyone, are a game-piece for them, and for the Imperials, and for Windhelm, and for Whiterun. Why you weren't arrested in Windhelm is another miracle - whatever they'd heard from Whiterun must've been too confusing or false. We have Talos to thank for that, I think."  
_

 _"You think?" I smirked, "So what, you will ensure I'm a game-piece of Whiterun? This was your game all along? And I am your prisoner?"_

 _"Not for Whiterun in particular. Just not for them. Anyone in Solitude. And yes- you damn well are. Until I deem you've done what is right."_

 _"That is humble of you. And what, I pray, does your excellency judge as the universal right?"_

 _"Something that preserves our culture - and now shut up."_

 _We shared one inflamed stare, but she broke off first, turning the other way, "_ _Sorry…" She mumbled, "You should close your eyes."_

 _I'd lay long hours beside her in the wide bed, too frightened to fall asleep despite my weariness. In a way I could forgive her, for despite my youth in Summerset, I didn't identify myself with the Dominion, nor did I hold Altmers particularly close to my heart in any political sense. The moment I closed my eyes, I saw her again as a tall silhouette against the rising sun, covered in blood and laughing as she murdered. And amidst all the horror of that sight I found an estranging beauty and elegance, like in the leap of a woodland beast- she was born for that; no matter her fierceness and the vulgarity of her strength, there was a sense to her motions, perfected, light and breathtakingly motile, like a dancers; an art she surely knew nothing of, but performed as innately as the wolf. And there my own wants, my feelings towards her came to a clash; it terrified me so, that I could want her still, and when for a glimpse I thought of her using that strength against me, overpowering me whole, I turned stiff from shame and anger towards myself, and clutched the sheets with my trembling fists. A powerless and desperate anger towards my own body that went all on shivers without dither. I turned to the wall, and eventually fell into a fearful sleep – but it would not last long, for again I was there, and once she'd slain them all, and turned to me, her own face was dead and eyeless like she'd risen from the grave, and she'd rush towards me, mindless as a corpse, fell me onto the snow, deaf to all my screams. I bolted up from covered in a freezing sweat, the echo of my own scream still in the air. She snored, undisturbed by my ruckus, and so I lay low again, staring to the ceiling until she woke in the afternoon._

 _Lydia displayed remarkable physical condition, for once she stood up, she'd regained some of her strength, and seemed to be her usual self: my care she neglected, and had no patience for my questions, her one word rebuttals thoroughly annoyed in voice. Her hand she denied from me outright, switching only the bandage to a better one, and I let it be for the time being. We had a small sullen supper, and I wore my robes again. Though tarnished and still damp, they'd help nosy mages keep to themselves their unwanted looks and words._

* * *

Aren still hadn't contracted anyone to repair the old bridge. The tiles were slippery with ice, and where the ledges had fallen off the crossing became not only unpleasant, but dangerous. The sea wind found my robes to be an ample sail, but Lydia tied her arm over my shoulders and pulled me close, so that forgetting the wind, we might have seemed like an old couple thus huddled, treading slowly and in pace. Her arm was heavy, and her hold firm, perhaps a little rough, but already that tiny gesture of her arm wrapped around my shoulder, just for a dozen feet, made me feel very safe.

I whispered the key-word into the wind, and the iron gates creaked open, inviting us to the courtyard. And before we could even step inside, a tall figure emerged from the shadows of the gatehouse.

And if I was surprised, the Altmer was shocked in delight; a little scream was all she managed before her impossible reach had me seized in an importunate embrace, "Nita…! Nita…!" she sputtered, kissing both my cheeks.

The deadly contagion of her joy had me laughing too, all weariness forgotten for a spell or two, "Bless you too, sweetheart."

"How can you be here!" She exclaimed, abruptly parting from my shoulders and studying me intensely for a whole two blinks before grasping me into another hug.

"You mean to say that your Telvanni bastard never told you I am summoned? I'm neither early nor late."

"He did? No, no – No, not a word to me- but let me tell you something, things have been so strange! Lots of weird folk coming and going-"

Her voice died as she finally noticed (or rather remembered – she had seen our figures all along on the bridge) Lydia standing a few feet behind my back, and then looked expectantly at me.

"She's my… My…" Now that I should have explained my relation to Lydia it dawned to me how little I understood about anything, least of all what in Oblivion my status meant on the steps of native tradition. She was my housecarl, yes, but I could never coherently explain why she was my housecarl. "Faralda, this is Lydia – Lydia, this is Faralda."

"She's with you?"

"Well… Yes. Please, Faralda, let her in, I'd not be standing here alive if she hadn't been with me."

Well knowing what kind of trickster she was, I cringed internally when she took her most haughty Altmer act, fearing for the worst. She eyed Lydia from head to toe almost disdainfully, and in the short silence of that ridiculously theatrical evaluation that right seeped with disregard for apparent non-magicians, and most of all Nords, I thought seeing in the corner of my eyes how Lydias entire frame was trembling, her muteness and her glare so charged that I could but hold my breath, half expecting that she'd explode and do something very stupid.

"I don't normally let those without any arcane gifts to the college grounds," Faralda spoke deliberately slowly, exaggerating her pompous articulation on every word, and holding her chin high just so she could look down on Lydia, "But your mistress here insists that you deserve some praise, and has vouchsafed that you won't break any magical instruments during your stay."

I didn't even dare look towards Lydia, only desperately begged Faralda with my eyes to reconsider – For in one regard Lydia was as predictable and familiar as any Nord. It took no magician to realise from which threads to pull. Amazingly enough Lydia said nothing, and when I then, relieved, dared to take a glance at her, her reddened cheeks and tightly shut lips revealed she in fact had something to say, something she only barely held captive behind her clenched teeth.

Quickly I grabbed Faraldas sleeve and pulled her with me towards the Arcanum, who tarried for a step or two, reluctant to turn her eyes from Lydia – she was immensely pleased with the results, no doubt full of laughter inside.

"Why didn't you devil announce of your coming? We could have prepared everything- Everything!"

"Truth be told," I pulled her even closer, lowering my voice, "This is not official business – I'm on leave of absence from mother college…"

"What's that? What's going on? Will Aren propose you?"

My mean look didn't get her to leave jesting, "Don't be like that Nita – Come on, the first thing I noticed was that you still don't have a ring – What am I supposed to think? It was high time for you to marry already a decade ago, but now it's unbearable!" She jumped in front of me, peddling towards the door and shamelessly devouring me with her golden cat eyes, "Look at you, a right mer demoness – How beautiful you are. A sumur princess, if only a little too round in the cheeks, and two feet too short."

Her playing made me blush terribly, mostly because I could only imagine what Lydia made out of it, for Faralda was so loud she must have heard. And I knew my blushing would incite her even more; she had to be stopped right away, "Drop it… Or I'll tell Aren that you're spreading these rumors to the freshmen."

Greatly (half-heartedly) alarmed, she snuck back to my side at once, "Alright, alright! I'll arrange it so that you get the best room, the very best overlooking the courtyard. And you say not a word to Aren. Right?"

"It's settled," I squeezed her arm, "though you speak as if it weren't quite free."

"Well, as I said, this place has been strange lately, very strange! An exhilarating amount of suspicious activity, very fertile for rumours, ominous guests who have come and gone without so much as revealing their face to anyone but Aren. I'll tell you that hawk is up to something, and you're in his mess now too. There's only one besides you, at least today. One guest. I don't know who he is, he didn't even come from the door, can you believe it? The bastard just appeared one day, Auri El knows how, stumbling right in on me in the staircase! Another Dunmer – They spend all day in Aren's study behind locked doors and drink shiploads of wine. He's a special guest, that much I can tell. Some Telvanni lord is my guess, or some council member from Cyrodiil, but I hope you'll find out all about him and tell me everything. Won't you?"

"That's a promise, darling," I assure her, "But not now, I'm in miserable shape, and she can't be much better off - oh what a woe this journey was! And don't ask me to recite it, it's all very dreadful and so miserable there isn't a jot worth remembering. All I want is the warmth of a fire, and a bed."

"Alright, poor maiden, you two wait right here and I'll go have a look which quarters are ready." And robes fluttering in hurry she dashed inside.

"Hey, thane," Lydia poked me soon after Faralda had left, "They'll let us lodge here?"

"Yes, Lydia, they will."

"And how long will you stay?"

"I told you already. I don't know."

She raised her brows, then gave a minimal nod and wandered off to the ledge giving out to the sea. After a split moment of hesitation I timidly joined her admiring the view, a few feet apart through another arc in the stone. The same azure splendour reached here as far as they eye could see, if one followed the coast line. Towards the horizon the ice gradually lessened, until far away there was nothing but the sea. "Lydia…"

No response.

"Do you mind… Would you mind always calling me just Helenita? I don't like… I don't want to be called with that title or any titles… Or to have, uh, that kind of, or any kind of, conduct, or formality…"

"As you will, my Thane."

"Was that a joke?"

"No."

"But I-"

"Yes, Helenita. It was."

"Oh." I scratched my neck, embarrassed, "Sorry."

"No."

"What no?"

"Not one sorry. Hate the word. I told you so already."

"Alright. Sorry."

She chuckled a little, but heartfeltly – I could not see her face, both of us were leaning outwards, the pillars supporting the windowless arcs in between us, but I knew she smiled for that blink of a laughter, sounded as if she wanted to repress it but couldn't. However tiny the detail and however ridiculous of me to dwell on it, this tiny, accidental exposure of some other Lydia was utterly intriguing and yet confusing to me. I don't mean to say that I thought knowing Lydia at all, but it contrasted her crudeness and the invisible, unspoken dislike she held for me, revealed to me a tiny fracture in this coarse shell – to me the only familiar part of her -, which may have shown me a glimpse of a world of light and warmth on the other side; and this most of all made me fall into a wistfulness there and then, because this other, secluded world, in any form it existed, was a world I was not welcomed into, and judging by her demeanour thus far, a world I would neither be welcomed into, now or likely ever. So quickly had she silenced her light laughter that it made me feel as if she was disappointed in herself for revealing something secret, something that didn't belong to me. I say wistful, for it made me sad yet hopeful at once – even if it was a fools hope. But I hadn't the faintest idea how confused she could and would yet make me with this same quirk, the contradicting and dissonant, even completely disconnected behaviour, reactions and gestures, that sometimes would be revealed in the most unexpected ways, as she had by the road when she'd held her face in in my hands.

"Hey! You two! The little dove and the black dove!"

It was Faralda. Yelling to us from the door. We both flinched and flipped around, as if caught doing something specific – Doves, how on earth did she come up with her stuff?

She stood there by the door at attention, then opened it for me and bowed pretentiously low, "Your royal highness, please grace our humble domain with your esteemed presence." Then she hurried in right after me and before the closely following Lydia, forcing the poor Nord to awkwardly halt mid step to not hit her nose into Faraldas back. "Your highness, if you please, this way, please!" She led us up the stairs, opened a door and tucked me inside, and not one bit charily grabbed Lydias shoulder and shoved her inside too, and with such rigidness as was unexpected from her slender frame and which caused even Lydia to nearly trip on her feet, then winked an eye to both of us, and slammed the door shut right in front of our noses before I could so much as thank her.

The round room was sumptuously furnished and it's walls, where not hidden behind book shelves, were covered with figure woven rugs. A thick stone column pierced the spherical room through floor to ceiling, where an alcove had been carved for the fireplace that gave its warmth towards the lone bed in the room.

Lydia shivered, tense as a bowstring and eyes shut – preparing for some remark on Faralda I hied away to the fireplace, but she said nothing and began unstrapping her vestments. When any knotting resisted her fingers or when a belt didn't come loose on the first yank, she ripped them off her so fiercely they flew against the wall and onto the floor. Without coyness she undressed until she wore nothing but a shirt and long sleeved underpants. "Finally…" she sighed and slumped on a chair by the dining table, huffing from her ridiculous efforts.

Shyly I followed her example and took off my cold robes, carefully avoiding any sound, and spread them on a recline by the fire; the air was so charged with her tension it made me quite stand on my toes.

"What's this…?"

I looked over to her, and grew exultant in a blink; by the table there lied an urn of peculiar shape, "Oh, sweet merciful Divines! Bless Aren and Faralda! Where are the cups, do you see any?!"

"Right here with the bread," she said calmly, already working on removing the cap, and soon a rich scent indeed suffused the air – the sweetness of a thick wine, lifting spirits by merely gracing the nose.

"Who's Aren?" She asked, pouring both cups to the brim.

"The headmaster of the college."

"Your affairs rest with him?"

"That they do."

"Well, to him, for this." She then emptied her goblet in one swig, "What's that smile on your face?"

"Nothing. Except, perhaps, just being alive, and in a warmed room, with a good bed at my disposal, and drinking wine; everything."

She let her eyes rest on me, steady and unmoving, in a way that in cultures I knew would be expectant of something, a gesture, some spoken word, some palpable interaction; but from her, the easiness she did it with, her lack of any disconcert in face of the lengthening silence dispelled that pressure from me; this gaze was light, her eyes expected nothing, they simply regarded me, calmly and without any visible purpose, in a way totally incomprehensible to me, wrapping me both into a heating and a cooling blanket; for her eyes did of course have a power of their own that worked on me, a power that made my heart quietly race and made my tongue go dry, but even so as my body relished being watched upon by those eyes, was I left confused as to how to act, to look back at her? No, I couldn't stand her eyes, frightened of how transparent I'd become, how much they would learn from mine (things I, at the time, knew not how to formulate even to myself). _Only later did I, a parchment devouring bookworm, begin understanding this form of communication (looking another human in the eyes? I mean, really looking into them- outrageous in the hectic life of southern capitals) how immensely rich and effortless it is conveying certain substance utterly integral to human life, but which would demand great mental exertion to be aptly dressed in words, if words even can truly dress that – I admit I can't._

Perhaps because I felt still like being on empty stomach, and perhaps because this wine was strong, even a few small sips fuddled me and gave courage. "If you are insistent on sticking with me, for Baalgruf's badge, I insist that now we start with you – Tell me of yourself."

"You know my name, what else do you want to know? How I became a soldier? Not even a story. The rest you know – Here now, because he said so."

"Well, for example I only know your first name…"

"I don't have a second name. And for the record I'm not one bit more knowledgeable about you."

"Kirbatha, I am Helenita Kirbatha."

"And I am Lydia." Her brows tilted slightly upwards, 'now what?'

"What do you mean no surname?"

"It means what it means. My name is Lydia, and that's all there is. If there was more – I don't know about it. Draw your own conclusions from that, but just let the topic rest. The 'why' of it is not your business anyway."

"I'm sorry…"

Her eyes flashed at me, and I bit my tongue to avoid repeating it yet again. But the harm was already done – I wouldn't have dared to try something else if she hadn't taken the reins; on the contrary, her mood didn't seem at all blunted, "But what about you – Kirbatha – Who are you? I'm a warrior, and you are a scholar, and a liar, and what else?"

"What? Liar- Why?"

"My thane, I remember exactly how you said it during dinner, what, maybe a dozen days ago: 'A lecturer; a rank and file researcher', spoken with hard modesty. Now I see the modesty was to kill questions – Look around, this is ridiculous – look at this room. A family could fit here, no, two families. And what about the rugs and the furs? They are wrought with figurines, art. And this goblet I hold in my hand? This is brass – and empty," she paused to fill both of our cups, her smirking eyes so captivating and piercing at once that they caused me to terribly blush, "Your Vienne is finer than all the herd of Whiterun combined, and though not necessarily in itself a proof, since nobly born would have such a horse anyhow, still tickles me; why would nobles do ordinary work? And to add yet more to this, you have affairs with the headmaster, and the doorkeeper welcomes you with silk gloves – My thane, out with it, you are no school lecturer."

"Lydia, it's Helenita. You are quick to forget," I stammered, intensely studying the adorned rugs instead.

She didn't rebuke me right away; the shifting of her frame unavoidably drew my eyes back. She leaned closer to me over the table, mouth bent from one end into a braggart smile, those glinting eyes and silky black hair stealing all of my concentration. Her voice came soft but persuasive, like giving a gentle order, "Don't change subjects, Helenita."

Her full attention, when she focused on me like that with a relentless sweetness, stifled my chest and forced me to tattle just something, the truth, anything, "Well, yes… And no – I am a lecturer, because I want to be one, but they in the college want more, so I fled to eastern Morrowind, and why Aren wants to see me, can only guess – I do research, specific, perhaps he needs verifying on something, I don't know…"

"Well, that wasn't so hard. Now I know something. Come, talking helps relax. You need that before sleep, and you must eat; here…" She tore the bread to bits, now for me, now for herself, "You'll wake up to cramps otherwise, still might, but not as bad. Continue, I want to hear more – why do they want you to be something else?"

"Well, they think I have connections because I studied at a prestigious school outside their sphere of influence in Summerset, and had hopes of me becoming some sort of consort or diplomat or a kind of foreign affairs minister, at least when concerning Altmers – Divines know why with such insistence, even a mudcrab can see I don't have necessary traits for that work…"

"Summerset?" Her eyes narrowed so slightly it was hardly noticeable, but enough to make me restless, I had never intended to divulge 'Summerset', but so had instantly blundered anyway.

"What? Oh, ah, yes, where I studied my first twenty years-"

"Hah, you say 'first' as if there were second ones too."

Thoroughly blushed and holding my free hand in a fist against my chest as if to contain the embarrassment, my voice broke into a whisper, "I'm forty seven."

"What?!" She gasped, eyes round, and grabbed my hand with both of hers, spreading my fingers apart and studying my palm, "But you don't look a day over thirty! And don't feel more but perhaps five and twenty."

Her touch made my breathing uneven, speaking difficult; and when her finger lightly trailed across one palm line my whole body ran on such hard shivers I barely even grasped what my own fumbling tongue was saying, "I'm only half Breton, Lydia, and quarter Altmer and perhaps a quarter Bosmer – short lived as Bretons are, with mer blood I'm no more than between twenty and thirty, or so, can't really know, perhaps I live to a two hundred, but as that blood lengthens life, it slows time; humans fifty year old are vastly more profound than I, or most often any mer of same age."

"I see," she said somewhat coldly and pulled away.

Nettled that I'd been such a blabber-mouth, by her aloofness and these vague reactions towards mentions of mer, I went a little irritably, "Here am I babbling and revealing my secrets whilst you part not a word of yourself-"

"And that's my fault? I ask a question and you answer and never say no – What's it to me when you then say what you say."

"What if you offend me? I confessed I'm part mer, and you went aloof and frigid like a wraith."

"And…?"

"Well- What? How, just 'and'?! I am something, and you hate it – where does that leave this dumb pact of servitude?"

"That's right; this dumb pact has it so, remember, we aren't meant to be friends. You are the one who initiated this 'get to know each other' farce. What would you know of my hate anyway, even so much as to call it 'hate' – What right do you have to say so? You know nothing. If you want to think I hate your blood, go on, doesn't concern me."

Angry and hurt I stared at her for a blink, powerless to retort her, rather wanting to bang my fists on the table, but too ashamed to do so; to spend days here together with her would be insufferable! I hit my cup down and leapt up, to away somewhere, the bed, to the staircase – but never got farther than a step; she thrust her arm in front of me and grasped me by the waist so powerfully that I instantly froze still, all anger dissipated by a familiar fright. Her tensed arm, limber and tenacious like a birch bough, with muscles stirred seemed to possess almost unnatural strength - I sensed it everywhere in my body when her arm touched me, the invisibly trembling power on her skin seeped inside me, draped me in fear - even if now she restrained this strength, even if she now only stopped me from stepping ahead; if she ever wanted to do anything to me, there would be nothing I could do to stop her. Her breathing was heavy, and for a silent while she kept me so, arm held straight, but face cast down. Then she sighed quietly and at length, "Sit."

Thunderstruck, I obeyed and sat down on my chair, able to only fearfully ogle at her and to try evening my harried breath.

"You should eat," she said, sounding a bit docile. "We are both tired – alright? And your muscles are strained, even if you now don't feel it. Eat, or the ache will make wake you up from sleep."

Sheepishly I munched on the bread while Lydia got up to clear the mess she'd made by the door. "I rode hard from Ivarstead, starting well before you since I never went down the steps. How did you ever keep up with me?"

"I came down the slope too. And I can only assume you wasted a day in Windhelm."

"Sweet Lydia," I gasped, "You've not slept since then?"

"Hardly."

She grew irritable as I shamelessly doted her with my eyes, enamored by her sense of duty – towards me, no matter the political connotations. It was a miracle she'd found me, and how she'd ever even managed that had taken so much more determination and strength than I'd have had in her shoes. And it made that guilt in my chest even heavier – twice already I'd had her do ridiculous things to ensure my safety.

"Right." She sighed, looking at the bed, "I'll sleep on the floor."

She snagged a pelt from the wall and laid down by the fireplace, covering herself with the fur, and was fast asleep. Soon after I climbed to the bed, lulled to sleep by the rattling fire and Lydias quiet snoring.

* * *

 _I saw myself prancing on the grass that grew on those hills, and I smiled: A red haired fain supple fawn, all freckles and dimples in sun. The southern ocean wind emptied her head of spells and syllables, and left remaining were the scents of summer blooms and the touch of hillside dew in a slow singing of sea. But as she came down those slopes green and good, her dimples faded, as did my smile; a bleak little grief stinging me now - I knew the coming, the girl did not -; yet she felt a stinging too as she saw a tall lithe figure sauntering by those waves: Skin all glowing gold and locks gilded bright by dusk, soles of her sandals slapping the sand and oceans waves doting her feet, kissing her toes, washing their prints engraved in sand. The lass knew her from school: An almost adult Altmer, several years ahead of her and of blood descending from a seat royal in those isles, and all the more divine with temper fierce like a rattling fire. In the lass' mind she was as divine as can be: even the sea threw itself at her feet, and even Auriel caressed her thoughtful face; but she did not see the sea or care for Auriels light. So the girl fell wistful, how could she approach the altmer, being as she was, not yet a woman nor an elf but human - a dumb creature by contrast, and bereft too of knowing love but right then, in that single despairing smite of spring - What if grown men and mer took note of her? Mer with higher than Breton blood in veins, with minds vaster in arcane and with bodies spent by twice and thrice her winters - How could she compete? Maybe the Altmer maiden already carried an infatuation alike hers in heart, only reserved for someone high and of might, tall and wise... Her only chance would be her Altmer not falling for anyone nor taken by anyone until she, little Helenita, would be adult - and still it was all wrong. In her heart she knew that mer-firefly was never one to take care of love nor loved ones, why, you had only take one glance at those demon eyes that gleamed from flaming ambition, at the thin lipped wide mouth, bitter but beautiful like a poison flower; remember the impudent words, the incisive arguments that left lecturers and teachers silent, their retorts and remarks stayed by the highness of her blood as by the audacious merits of her youthful wit. No, no, she wouldn't be content but when conquered, only yours when outdone and outshone in all. To have her, even in fantasy, Helenita would have to be everything she was not - and worse yet, perhaps even in sex; weren't all those qualities first manifested in the male? Someone grasped my shoulder, and when I flinched and tried to rise up, I met with her - she stared me down with those mystic and eternally hungering eyes, and as their magic in me had long since been forgotten, seeing them anew revived all the bitter tempests in my heart; how desperately I had wanted to be hers, to be subdued in that lithe and fiery bosom! All I had blissfully forgotten, but now those shameful fantasies and wants were unbound from some mortified corner of my heart, soaring in my blood and setting my limbs trembling as if I were teen once more, when my infatuation for her had grown unhealthy and obsessive; her burning breath graced my lips, her cruel mouth so close, smiling victoriously at me; so, so close, lips hovering right over mine, intoxicating in the almost-touching, and still impossibly distant and unattainable, amplifying the maddening sway in her eyes; oh, how powerful she was, what unbearable power she held over me, 'Please hold me… Touch me, take me - do anything to me if you just touch me!' I recall trying to fumble hold of her before she'd escape, but my arms were too weak to seize her, and my heavy tongue in vain rambled her name and nonsense, "Semmel – Take me! Niraniya! Niraniya…" But her face blended into someone else's, mingled into a blurry mist._

"Shhhh!" Faraldas sharp whizzing finally woke me up. She was sitting by the bedside and held my writhing down by the shoulder, and laid a finger over the lips. She studied me most curiously, then cocked her head towards the fireplace. The sound of Lydias loud snoring brought a smile on my lips too. There she was, balled up like a dog next to the fire.

"What manner of dreams were those, Nita?" She whispered, eyes gleefully glinting, "I could swear you were about to have someone between your legs…"

"You- What?!"

"Hey now, you were the one all moaning by yourself, cheeks red and panting like, 'oh, take me, something-something, take me!', trying to grapple me like you wanted to ravage me-"

"Impudent little… Dare you!" My blood was yet hot, desperately clinging to that waning lust – Angrily I grasped her bun and shoved her face into the pillow beside me, "That'll teach you!"

"No, no, help!" She yelped, giggling uncontrollably and half muffled in the bedsheets. Her eyes were full of laughter as she wrung herself free and piously stooped on her knees and kissed my hand, "Please forgive me, Nita."

"You dork," I huffed, slightly disappointed how difficult it was to be upset with Faralda. Yawning, I threw my feet on the stone floor, relishing of that cold touch under my soles. "How long did I sleep?"

"It's early evening, dear. Is something wrong?"

"Well, my hair for starters," I said, unhappily pulling my tangled red hair, soon disgusted how greasy my fingers felt from merely once swiping that mess, "Actually everything. I'm covered in shit. And I stink. Can't meet Aren like this."

"Heaven's forbid! Of course you can't; that's why I'm here. He wants to see you tonight, if possible, but later, by midnight I think he said, so we have some hours to do what we can. I warmed the bath upstairs, and believe it or not – and this is not even the best bit- but Winterhold remains in possession of some ancient Cyrodiilic craftsmanship export; a wall-tall mirror as precise as only mer and Imperials can and could devise, truly a beautiful creation, and who knows how many centuries it's laid here; one of my best friends – but the best bit, is that not a week before you one certain carriage finally came, delivered something I'd for ages been awaiting - the order I sent months ago - but we being in the farthest and the coldest corner of the world, they won't of course do anything fast but perhaps the mail, anyway, this thing, this package – hold, hold - came to me not from Solitude, no, not from Imperial City or Hammerfell or Highrock, or any such place at all, but from – wait for it - from Summerset! Right from Alinor! It's splendid, so splendid it brings a tear to my eye and fills my heart with pride that I'm a true-born Altmer woman, oh my Alinor - Helenita, do you remember our glass towers that break the sunlight in all colours of the rainbow? Or our crystal pinnacles, visible even from our ancient college grounds, that bending like hypnotic dreams pine for the clouds in impossible heights? There's no other Alinor in all Nirn, and no such paints as only our women wear – And those paints is exactly what I have here in my hands now, and which we will use-" She covered my mouth with her palm, laughing and silencing my exhilarated interjections, "-to make you so irresistible that Aren should yet find himself proposing you after all, or then I'll hold it confirmed that he's devoid of any eye for female beauty."

"No way!" I gasped, and latched to her shoulders, hugging her tight, "Thank you! Thank you…! This is spoiling of the worst degree. Oh, you can't imagine how I've missed Alinor…"

 _To anyone thinking my reaction vain – alright, yes, it was, to a certain degree- you have to understand the cosmetics devised by Aldmeri women are worth their weight in gold, and more – no other race on Nirn has their immaculate sense for aesthetics, and if women cross-culturally are ripe with this vice, Altmer women are doubly so, and it is not without merit. Their face-paints are invisible on your skin, while transforming it whole – an untrained eye won't see you're wearing any. They can reshape your complexion, enlarge or diminish your features, turn a peasant-girl into a duchess, or a duchess into a deity, conjure for you brows or lips you never had, make your nose prouder than a queens; double or halve your eyes, whichever is desired, or bring their color tenfold stronger. On an Altmer woman they can conjure of her a demon, so haughty and murderously proud and elegant, that as a girl I'd quite lost my knees in aesthetic ecstasy at the mere sight of their tall divinity.  
_

"We have to remember our guest too, a councillor or another arch-mage for all I know. No way he too should be denied the splendor of you. My darling, you have the most complex face I've seen on a human – Kind and mellow like a Breton, yet every feature still mer-mingled, so that I think I first see mer here, and clearly there, and everywhere, and then looking more intently, no longer anywhere –and again everywhere, and that's why you out of all can't go paintless."

"You are too good to me," I sighed, even impatient now to meet Aren, all yesterdays worries swept away as if nothing. That's a little touch of Faralda in the night for you.

"Come," she kissed both of my cheeks and pulled me up, "and to it."

"Wait," I hitched her back, "What about Lydia?"

"Who?"

"My serv- Stop teasing her, you bovine… She probably wants to bathe too, and trust me, she more than deserves that."

She furrowed her brows, staring seriously at the sleeping Lydia, "Ah right, the Nord. Suppose so… Can you bathe together?"

"What?"

"Why not? The water doesn't stay warm for very long, and her robust frame could probably finish that dream nicely for you-"

"Are you mad?!" quickly I pressed my hand on her mouth, hard, "What if she heard that?"

Her expression, half hidden under my palm broke into a muffled giggling, shuddering her whole body; she tried not freeing herself with force, only parted her lips and licked my palm, laughing even harder when I then quickly plucked my hand away. She wiped away the tears in her eyes, doing her best to gather herself, "She sleeps like a dog – all this ruckus and still snoring, quiet, quiet, listen…"

"Alright, fine – Pray you leave her be when she wakes up. She'll take it out on me if she can't kill you. You better watch it, even now she's dreaming of smashing your head against the stone I bet."

She rounded her eyes, "Really? But I love Nords – and what else have I shown her but love? What a slave. But come," she slapped me on the butt and pushed me towards the door. "Enough of this, she can use the bath after we're done. It's time."

* * *

She was still sleeping on the rugs. I sat down on the fire warmed stones beside her, having to wait for yet a while before getting dressed. Faralda had sent an apprentice to fetch my saddlebags, where I'd packed some of my finer silk robes. It was impossible to not look at her snoring; she had fought herself free from under the pelt, now lying there in only a shirt and trousers. Her loose and deep-necked undershirt made her look more like a swashbuckler than a Nord. Some strands of her silky black hair flowed down on her front, nesting in her clavicles, mesmerising against her pale skin. So sleeping, all peaceful, she was devastatingly handsome, a strange combination of the feminine and something more, so that if one looked at only her face, one would either call her a very handsome young woman, or a staggeringly beautiful young man, and not be completely satisfied with either, though likely settling with the first. Yet most remarkable to me was the expression on her sleeping face, one of peace as only the sleeping may, and so one I'd never yet studied – one of timeless sorrow, a light melancholy pain unbecoming youthful faces but belonging to the old and the weary, and one that caused in me an intense but inexplicable craving to learn what had thus shaped her face, to learn if her woes whose shadows I thought to see were in need of remedies.

After who knows how many moments of silent staring some stray sound of life from beyond the door stirred me awake. All I had to do was to give a nudge to wake her, and for stupid reasons I decided to just lay my palm against her neck, when I for once had the chance to sense her naked skin. Upon the touch two things happened, first the surge of heat that rushed through me; the second, in the next blink of an eye she twitched, her hand grabbing my wrist before I could react, sending me into panic, how would I explain what I was doing? But to no avail, for her eyes remained shut, her mind in the dreaming sleeve. With unbelievable tenderness she pressed my palm better against her neck, murmuring something inaudible, a faint smile on her lips. And then, slowly, her eyes opened, their stare fixated right into the flames, oblivious of me. Perhaps my sharp inhale stifled the stillness and broke some magic, for her eyes snapped to the here-and-now, confused as if they'd just been searching for something beyond a boundless distance. Her lips parted, as if to say something, but she had no words, and then her hand gently let go of my wrist.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," I said shyly as she nudged herself a little farther away.

"And you look different."

In the dim fire-light there wasn't almost a trace of green in her eyes; all was swallowed by dilated black pupils, making those eyes completely unreadable, in the dark likening her heavy gaze to something resembling the glare of a beast.

Yet her reply, and the heaviness of her eyes insistently resting on me, stirred me to a most petty and vain response, "How do I look like, then?"

Even a simple question now caught her somehow off-guard; she stared mutely at me, as if she still hadn't fully woken and was dizzy with drowsiness, and even her gaze, though in the dim first seeming intense, lost focus and evaded my eyes. And when I thought she'd say nothing, the most unexpected words just fell from her lips, spoken quietly to the fire, and with such artless simplicity as when a sentiment invokes no mind but comes by itself and dressed in words only known by the heart, "You are beautiful."

"Thank you…" I breathed, weak: Her words had impaled my chest and made it rise and sink with rampant speed.

She shook her head as if to throw off the last grains of dreaming dusts, jumped up and reached fingers towards the ceiling, stretching, almost touching stone. She paced around for a while, rotating and waving her arms as if warming up, but with rough motions, and silent in her thoughts, briefly glancing at me here and there.

"Do you want to bathe? It's free, upstairs."

She nodded.

"I'm off to meet Aren. Will probably stay quite late. I'll have Fara- Someone arrange dinner for you. But go, I still need to get dressed."

And she went, mutely and troubled by something – then had I no time to deliberate on her gloominess, forced to push her off my mind, and thus soon forgot about this, yet another Lydia, remembering only her surprising words that greatly inflated my vanity – and now writing, I'd perhaps have saved myself from a lot of pain had I then paid attention and figured out the cues in her distant but vulnerable behavior; for those words I thought had called me beautiful were not spoken to me.


	9. Chapter 9

"Come in…" a voice clearly belonging to a Dunmer called out.

Savos Aren was sitting behind his study, fixated on some schematics on the table. In front of his study, back towards me sat his guest. White hair, shaven at the sides, revealing Dunmer skin. Unable to resist my curiosity I sent a very delicate identifying thought towards him to know by his potency the stakes of this meeting. Immediately a blinding and dizzying presence lashed over me, more potent by milestones than any I've ever experienced, even in Summerset.

"Ah, Helenita," Aren greeted me, lifting up his eyes from the reading, grey brows at once puckering in concern when he saw me falter on my feet, "Are you alright?"

Taking deep breath with closed eyes I regained my composure, the flash of unparalleled power draining away, then bowed politely, "Yes, pardon me, Aren."

He beckoned towards the empty seat next his guest, "You two probably haven't met before."

Arens guest, an aging but handsome Dunmer, was sunken in his thoughts, arms crossed over his chest and red eyes intensely staring off someplace distant, his forehead wrinkled in a profoundly thoughtful manner. He took no notice of me even as my chair audibly creaked upon taking my weight.

"Divayth, I would like you to meet Helenita, the mage I invited from Arcane University."

He raised his gaze, half surprised, then shifted his attention to me, briefly regarding me from head to toe. "Divayth Fyr," he repeated and gave me a small nod, a friendly twinkling in his eyes.

"Helenita Kirbatha, it's my honour." I responded hazily, stunned by his presence – A name of which, even in the far-west and the far-east I'd only heard spoken of with a dread awe and wonder.

"And that's it for formalities," Savos Aren smirked, returning his focus back to the parchment on his desk; schematics of some sort. "Now then, what do you know of the discovery our college made in Saarthal?"

"Not more than what reads on the letter, which is to say not much."

He sighed with relief, "Good. I was making sure nobody else in the Imperial City would wind up on any information."

"Why the secrecy?"

"We don't want anyone to hear about it. Not yet. Not before we know more. If word got out there'd be a thousand mages milling about, and I wouldn't be able to keep it here."

"Pardon me, Savos, but I don't understand…?"

"Why exactly you are here? Listen, Helenita… We have all the reasons to assume that what we've found is nothing to be fiddled with. At any cost it must not end in the wrong hands – any hand that would try harnessing the powers it may or may not contain. Rather, it is a matter which must be handled with the utmost delicacy, and that Divayth Fyr himself found it interesting enough to _personally_ arrive on my summons speaks for itself. I don't have many people I could turn to, Winterhold is isolated. Furthermore, there's nobody else I'd trust more than certain Telvanni. What we are interested in, is to define our discovery, then decide what we do with it, in the worst scenario having to hide it, which is something only Divayth can help us with." He paused and poured himself a cup of wine, glimpsing at me from under his brows; I nodded, and he filled the third cup laid for me, "Why then, did I request you to be present as well? I know of your family, and of your studies in Summerset, which I should say is an extremely rare delicacy these days. I also know of your research, in fact I have some copies in my library – some of the more impressive documents I've read in the past half-century. But most importantly because I remember you clearly from your visit a decade ago. You're a kindred spirit, Helenita, if I may say so, despite our interactions were quite brief. I can read people, and you're particularly easy to read."

Even in this company I found myself blushing, attempting to hide it by sipping the wine.

"I know that if you get involved in this project, you're in it only for the sake of learning, and understand more than well why nobody needs to hear a word of this. Even two Dunmer wizards, one of small renown, the other a bit greater, welcome any such help – We need any we can get. I'd venture to proclaim, if this mystery can be tackled it'll be the most significant discovery in at least a century. And last, but not the least, and do correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you spend time with the Telvanni as well?"

"I did, two years."

At this, Divayth slightly budged on his chair, pensively stroking his chin, "I don't always identify with the Telvanni myself, but I do wonder how you managed to convince our kin to have you for a grand two years? And as a student, I assume? Hum, no need to answer, it is of no importance, only curious, since we Dunmers have no particular eye for human beauty."

Baffled by the implications in his comment I could only round my eyes, partly amused. Aren quickly cleared his throat, "It does speak in your favour nonetheless. Others must have seen through you, the same way as I did – You're not kin with the Arcane University, or Aldmeri, or any faction at all. Anyway, I hope all of this is a satisfactory answer?"

"It does, Aren. Thank you. But say, since you mentioned my research, do you think that's somehow related?"

Divayth answered my question before Aren could even open his mouth, "The Dwemer are _always_ related, Helenita – even if only through their understanding of the Mundus."

"Before it is proven otherwise anyway," Aren filled in, "it's a standard assumption quite honestly. But before we expand on any of our thoughts, I think you should see it for yourself."

Divayth nodded, "Even if looking at it up close is more or less pointless at this stage, I will not object to seeing it again."

* * *

"We've sealed off the central hall under these circumstances," Aren explained as we descended the stairs to the ground floor, "It's the only place we could fit it in, to be honest."

A grated metal door and an illusion barred the view to the great hall. With Aren's key and a secret word the gate opened, and once inside, he immediately sealed the gate again.

And I didn't wonder why, the splendid thing was massive, at the first sight stealing my heart and also my tongue; a huge globe shining with blue light, floating in the air above the college well, spinning around its own axis, asymmetrically, altering speed and angle all the time. It's surface seemed to consist of metal plates, all of varying sizes and shapes, each ridden with scripture, those too without any pattern, and periodically vanishing and again becoming visible, glowing with a deep turquoise light. It emitted a pleasant humming sound, at first monotonous, and then no more; it was varying strength, tone and pitch. This strangely energetic and at times frantic rotation and the deep humming singing invigorated the mind; never repeating, endlessly alluring, pleasing and stimulating both the eyes and the ears, and something much more – even the air seemed to vibrate with this odd liveliness I can only describe as being joyful, so far as you can attach human emotions to a creation the like of this.

"B'vek… This isn't… If it's not Dwemer legacy, it's divine – this can't be our creation…"

Divayth circled the globe in steady steps, eyes intently set on its surface, his hand pensively scratching his chin, "See, Helenita, it's covered in some sort of writing. But don't ask for a code. We don't have any. Besides, I have a feeling this text is not meant for all eyes, perhaps not even for mine."

"What in Oblivion is this thing?" I breathed.

"Based on how heavily it seems warded against decryption, I'd be inclined to call it a prison. But what's inside, I can't say. Knowledge. Perhaps a God."

"… Or the Dwemers," Aren purposefully slipped.

"Now that would be something even I wouldn't expect." Divayth admitted with a wry smile.

"What happens if you try to grasp it with your mind?"

"It reveals nothing. It's elusive. And even if you could somehow penetrate it, who's to say you'd understand anything? Perhaps if one knew how to approach it, knew where to start the process, it'd have a sharp response. Maybe even lethal? Go ahead and try, so you know what I mean. But be careful with your touch, better not provoke it too much. We haven't dared apply any force; it might get annoyed."

"I will, but now another question comes to mind. You talk of it as it was something self-conscious. Could this thing – what do we call it? – be biological? At first I thought the surface was metal, but now I don't know…"

"It is an interesting question," Savos Aren says, "We had the same thought yesterday. Possibly, especially a combination of organic matter and constructed machinery seems like an attractive idea. A machine with some sort of spirit."

"And what of this sound it emits… The movement – is there a pattern?"

"I stood here from dawn 'til dusk some days ago," Divayth said, "observing just that. In a whole day it seemed to never repeat anything as far as I could perceive. And not only that, but the longer you concentrate on it, the more it seems to be conveying something, some whole, a story or history, perhaps happening inside it as we speak – why it has this need, there's no knowing. Perhaps it is not emission, perhaps it is a process of absorption, a programmed magic recording specific substance; from all three of us present now, or maybe something that's farther than our eyes can see, who knows."

"Gently, then…" I almost sang, thrilled.

This ability to identify powers and presences is not by any means a complex art, but one nonetheless fallen into obscurity and eventually forgotten in the Imperial world. I had learned it on Summerset, and reinforced it in the east, where they teach magic with different methods and with an entirely different mental approach. These differences I learned quickly upon taking my position within the Arcane University; baffled when nobody seemed to understand me when I spoke of this manner of identification. I'm not sure if it's truly magic in the first place, but rather an innate, meditative gift running in, at least, mer blood. It is difficult to express in writing, because here we inevitably venture into an area that doesn't bend to words, and can't bend. It involves silencing emotion and thought, all inner voice, and just looking at something when you're thus abruptly 'removed' from existence. This sounds like an impossible feat, and it does require arduous practice, but eventually becomes as easy as holding your breath – not so difficult for a scant while. In this state, your being clean as a white slate, your eyes, hearing or even the nose simply absorbs ether, which will by itself not appear as a thought, nor be dressed in words within you, but take form of an emotion, something you remember without remembering. How it all happens, I have no explanation, except perhaps a vague belief that all knowledge is innate for us as we consist of particles that forms the universe. And that's what I did resting my eyes on that floating orb, and at that exact moment the incomprehensible took place, a mental distortion birthing hallucination and disrupting the absorption; there was nothing to be absorbed - it replicated what I did, only I wasn't me - I was the orb.

I jumped, screaming as you do half-way waking from a nightmare, in that moment when your body begins thinking as two, one in the dream, the other trying violently to break away from it. It was a blink of an eye without connection, and I fell straight on my butt on that hard stone, "Auch!"

"What did you do!" Divayth gasped loudly, running to me.

"I don't know… I don't, I can't – it makes little sense…"

"Try!" He gushed, kneeling beside me, placed his finger and thumb on my brow and beneath the eye, searching for something.

"Well – Well, I don't… I wanted to find out what it is, normally, staring at it, and then – then it replicates all, and I was nothing but identifying my own self."

He quickly repeated the procedure to my other eye before saying anything, "It left nothing in you, based on what I can see here. But expand – it replicated what? It targeted you?"

"Mirror, mirror; I reached a hand towards it, and upon touching it, the orb, touches me with my own hand, as if I were doubled. Or no, I am the orb, and I feel my own hand touching myself, ah, I'm sorry, I don't understand – I could try again."

"Something happened, at least," Aren chuckled, "Perhaps our first breakthrough? We've been banging our head against a wall for a week."

Divayth pulled me on my feet, a pensive expression on his face, "We'll delve into what you said, upstairs. Perhaps its wiser to not disturb it further now."

"As fascinating as this thing is, there is little gain gaping at it..." Savos said, then kept a thoughtful pause, eyes firing up and measuring both of us with a hidden gleam, almost immediately quieting some secretive conjunction he'd wound up on, though continuing composedly, "We could try to coerce it with force, and perhaps we will later try that, but I also have something to tell both of you before we proceed with anything, and so – let's return to my study."

"You are our host, Savos. Lead the way," Divayth said graciously.

* * *

"More wine? Good." Aren answered his own question for all three of us, eagerly filling the cups. "Before we talk more of our discovery – I should unfold some undisclosed history of Winterhold. Divayth, would you be willing to test the orb, if we had a daedric artifact in our possession?"

Divayth raised his brows questioningly, "It depends on the artifact. Are you hiding one in your basement?"

"Unfortunately not." Aren sighed deeply, and took an even deeper swig from his goblet, filling it anew, "I might have possession over one, if I had not failed some decades ago."

"Out with it, my friend," Divayth coaxed.

"A group of us mer set out to Labyrinthian back in the days. To unearth the secrets of Shalidor. That journey was thoroughly unofficial, and would never have been sanctioned by the college. A dragon priest from the merethic age is buried within the domain of Shalidor. I was the only one to get out alive. Four of my colleagues perished against the magic of Morokei – one of the eight we know to be buried within Skyrim. That staff Morokei wore against us…"

Divayth straightened his back, immediately shapening his regard.

"… there is no mistaking it, if I anything know. Morokei is in possession of the staff of Magnus himself."

"It's here?" Divayth laughed lightly, "Not 200 years ago I met a certain someone who claimed to have found it in old Molag Amur. I never saw it, but seeing as this individual was then in possession of Kagrenac's legacy, I have no trouble believing the staff of Magnus was also a part of the collection. Haven't heard of this old friend for over a century now. But it is not all impossible – Aedric and Daedric artifacts have the habit of disappearing and reappearing as they will."

"Who knows what effect the staff will have on the orb?"

"Why didn't you tell me of this sooner, Aren?"

"Shame, I suppose. My comrades sacrificed themselves to bind Morokei in banishment with their souls. And I have not the power to withstand Morokei, even without the staff."

"And what about the three of us, my young friend?" Divayth said.

"That was my hope – with you in our party I'd not be frightened to return there once more."

"It's been quite a while since I've last hunted for artifacts – perhaps it is time again." Divayth stood up, waved a sign in the air, and lo! His robes had disappeared, and he appeared as the planeswalker of legends, tall and clad in ebony metal drenched in daedric blood; he, who would traverse the ether twain the two spheres of domain: Mundus and Oblivion; sit down with a Daedric prince for a cup of tea, ignore all Tamriel at his heels and stack up books and scrolls in his tower of Tel Fyr.

His eyes were gleaming with a youthful vigor, and he banged his fists on the table, "That's right, Savos my friend! When do we set out? I can feel the centuries shaking from my shoulders."

Savos could hardly contain his elation. Mouth twitching with a great smile he peeked at me, "Helenita?"

"Far be such adventures from me, but with Divayth joining even I have the courage. If my spells are of any help, I'd gladly join."

"Then let's prepare – Divayth, patience, let Helenita rest for the night. We'll be ready at dawn."

"Settled," the old wizard said, and lapsed back on his chair.

"One more thing. Helenita - I heard some estranging rumours coming from the south not more than three or four days ago. They told of an altmer wizard encountering a dragon the fields of Whiterun, usurping it for who knows whose demise – and later, the story was different: now it was a Breton sorceress who had talked with the dragon, and it'd flown back to the skies. I can only assume you've heard of these – not many Breton sorceresses in Skyrim. Were you there?"

"Yes," I mumbled, "It was me." _'Oh would that none of that'd ever happened!'_

"A dragon? Really?" Divayth said.

"Yes."

"Really?" Divayth repeated, straightening his back and looking at me more intently. "Care to elaborate?"

"It descended from beyond the clouds onto the tundra, and landed in front of me. It spoke to me – but I understood then not what it said-"

"What did the dragon say?"

"He said… He said, 'Brit monah, Zu'u los Mirmulnir' – but I understood it not, and then he said, 'Ven fen koraav hin zul, ahrk hi fen mindoraan mu."

Divayth darted towards Aren, "Did you know of this?"

"Of course not – Divayth, what's the matter?"

He stood up again and walked briskly to the fireplace, muttering something, then turned back, "Do you know what the words mean?"

"I'm not sure – I haven't properly thought upon them yet."

"So you also know the tongue of dragons? How?"

"I did not say so – but someone taught me the way to understand their words."

"Curious," Divayth hummed, "I'm no expert on Thu'um, but that dragon, Mirmulnir, called you "mother". And said that the winds would recognise your voice, and then you would understand. Why did you ask about this now, Savos? What did you have in mind?"

"Nothing yet – I just wanted to verify the rumours."

All were quiet for a while, before Divayth pensively scratched his chin, "You know, this opens up something new. Dragons don't talk to any mortals, and seldom less attribute maternity to them – if Helenita is a Shezzarine, what would the staff of Magnus work through her?"

"A Shezzarine...?" I whispered, growing pale.

Savos filled the cups again, "I can't expand on that – I only know there is a vague correlation with Shezzarines and the Aetherium. Why would Helenita be one?"

"Don't ask me," Divayth said, "these things are veiled in the darkness, even from me. It doesn't have to make sense. I will not explain now – later. I need time to think on this. Remember she is not necessarily one, but this is a good sign. Who taught you to their tongue?"

"One of the Greybeards – I came here from Hrothgar, the folk of Whiterun forced me to visit the mountain before letting me go. They summoned me."

"And what did they say?"

"Vague words- I don't know what role they expect me to fill, but their master spoke of the return of Alduin, a dragon of old, who'd have the power to restart a Kalpa. I don't know what to make of it, for my part I'd rather have no role whatsoever. I'd rather not any Alduin even exists."

"Well these are some news!" Divayth exclaimed, "Savos never told me how interesting friends he has. This will give me more to think of. But let us obtain the staff first. Then we can think about our next move."

* * *

I slumped against the hard wooden door of our room, exhausted, drunk, and deeply satisfied –and not due to the joy just shared with two kindred spirits upstairs; I'd already forgotten all in the few breaths coming down the stairs to this door-, for Lydia awaited on the other side; I'd get to see her face, I'd get to exist in that small space with her, so small there would be no need for imagination. Weakly leaning against the door and smiling like an idiot, I could no longer escape coming to terms with myself – that force she'd renewed in me upon first glance was nothing but itself, and meaningless without her.

She was sitting on a chair in front of the fire, legs pulled up, staring into the flames. For a while I looked at her, feasting with my eyes on her profile when I could; she was wholly immersed in the fire. "Where are you, Lydia?"

"Here." She said tiredly.

I battled the temptation to make questions – what was in the fire? But I said nothing, weighing her aloofness to be a sensitive kind; I was quite afraid of venturing with words where I had no leave.

"We leave on an expedition tomorrow. I don't know if you want to come. You don't have to."

"Who is 'we', and where to?"

"Me and two other mages. To Labyrinthian."

She scoffed, "To dig snow with shovels?"

"No. We are going inside."

She turned to me, took a heavy look, and upon realizing I meant what I'd said, shrugged her shoulders, "Right. Then I must."

"And what if I forbid you? Can I do that?"

"If you have to ask, not really. So, no. You can't."

"Then we'll leave in the morning."


	10. Chapter 10

Those two Dunmers made a pair befit for legends; two tall cloaked figures with staves and secret powers too fierce to be beheld; were they plucked from some merethic mythos of elven dawn? They went ahead, and us two came behind; us two humans (or well, one split with bloods of mer and men) after them; they shared some quiet few words; we our own or none at all. Lydia strode in the snow, a tensed steady anger veiling her face; her pale hard features in that constant storm were more beautiful than the moon, so that every glance I lent her way made me hurt with deep sweet pain – Those long weary miles we wandered in silence and in snow were filled with magic and with fear; the winds of the blizzard swallowed sounds but the white tempests on those frozen slopes; a pious whistling silence that drew us perhaps near – her stern steady treading was but a poor and coarse cover for a deep seated dread: now I perceived it, that cold hard shell that was built out of fear; a bold and brazen shield that leaned its seeming strength on louring clouds; on a threat of thunder and of storm – but, I thought, those clouds hid but a small frail spirit, like the nooks of a deep dark forest hide a quiet little brook; It springs forth and gives life to the woods, and while hidden from all, is loved by the roots and the soil. In secret, from both of us, the cold whistling songs bound our bloods with a frail new seal; a lace loosely tied but at least not of duty; If I kept my lips tightly knit, I'd not spoil that winter-woven spell; Both of us, if our eyes in partial accident met, knew that this white void filled our ears with words, and we needed none more. Perhaps the division of our paired ages, and the sundered pasts of our bloods whispering of a distance that nothing could tie, made us walk closer by; they were a pair as two mer, and we as we, that had our share of the incomprehensible and inseparable experience of being human.

I can't by straining memory believe there to have been more but those dead white plains and that endless good wind; that winters gentle touch on our faces. And if the frozen slopes of those mountain sides were quiet, so were the crumbling remnants of Shalidors domain. There in forlorn dwellings I think the worlds solitude in secret thrives and seeps into mortal realms; had we not been with Savos and Divayth, that sacred stillness would've mortified my heart with a dread of timeless death; the stairs that rose to the wall and to the temples, the porches of all houses – snow had wrapped them in a pale embrace of centuries worth and now told living eyes how none had treaded those steps or looked inside those black holes; the windows and doors, gates into abyssal voids, where time had drowned itself wailing the hopeless words of 'never to return'. Divayth moved as if he was Shalidor's master, as if he had time and again returned there between all epochs.

 _The dread beating in my heart bids me make haste, to write and to pass all those long dead corridors of black old gods, to write and so wipe my memories from their wights: a chill stiffens my fingers and soils the inks rounded shapes; a wraiths lick stirs my skin all on shivers, and I hitch and nervously dart on my chair and skim the room with my sights; those graves that we did pass and their ancient silences disturb; have those gaunt spirits followed me here to my cottage? Does the flame in the fire tremble with my fears? Does it feel the tongueless stare of times hollowed eyes; ever resentful and incomprehensible in hate. Ah, avaunt, nonsense; and yet, some wine is wanted to will the writing forward._

 _This sweet red drink, how it makes my blood pulse with heat; yields courage to my waning heart; the memory of what is to come outside, after we survived; that makes my blood race, my limbs shake and tremble with shame; my fingers wish I'd be there already, to tackle that tumultuous tempest of youthful? ache, or, at least, the memory of it; for up to the moment of writing I have forbid myself from reminiscing on some things of weight, for they are both too sweet and too painful._

 _And another part that discourages my hand is the sheer force of craft that, once more, time bids me make use, to capture proud Divayths deeds in words; I, who never used my ink but to copy syllables by pen, on yellowing parchments never to be publicly read; the frail passages built of faltering words must honour now the craft of Divayths magic schools; and had I now the sufficient skills to bind those sights with scribing frames, I'd rival the best masters quills have ever known._

The lightless halls of dawns long since lived and now nothing giving made me mince on my sheepskin shoes as timidly as a mouse, hiding in the spheres of our faerie fires. Of those corridors of sleeping death I recite not many words. An endless journey into the heart of darkness it felt like, until in the depths of the earth the air teemed with magical energies, the air stirring with the whispers of the dead.

Lydia held my arm for comfort, and I doubt only for mine. She raised her torch and stared eerily at the murals slipping into light and passing into shadow once again, scriptures and artwork retelling the stories of the dead; who lay buried and what deeds they had done. Many great tales of old they told, I am certain, of men whose names the woods and the hills once had known, what foes they had vanquished, what turmoils overcome. And there they lie nameless, side by side, in a cold silence, hoards of gold by their feet. Oh glimmering gold, so beautiful and sought, there lying in the endless night, never again a joy under light, silently lying 'til the moons are dead and the sun is spent, and we all are dead in the final night.

"You feel his presence, don't you?" Savos said, his voice sending echoes in the long hallways.

"Not far off now," Divayth replied calmly.

"He is powerful," I whispered.

Both dunmers remained silent.

"Savos, contain the forces I will unleash as to not burn the walls and you three. Helenita, stay behind and shield yourself. Leave Morokei to me."

There at last in a great cavern Morokei greeted us with a hollow laugh, imprisoned in a shell of dark magic.

No casting I've ever seen comes close to the combat of these two adversaries: the dragon priest and proud Divayth Fyr. His faerie fire shone like a star, banishing shadow and dark. Savos spoke the word to unbind the dragon priest from his prison, and within the same instant Morokei sent multitudinous long tethering coils of fire and lightning to enshroud Divayth in a veil of crackling flame, but they burst into a thousand tiny fireflies slinging into the walls in a nova. The syllables Divayth uttered run deeper in dream than Thu'um, I deem, for the ground trembled under his might that conjured a maelstrom of arcane power. The din of that thunderous storm and the raging exchange of fire and light stole the last little piece of courage that had got me even so far.

"Cover yourselves!" Savos roared through the windy currents of blue and white flame, and Lydia tackled me with her, throwing me against a boulder and shielding me with her own body. In her tensed arms I wept in fear; their strength the softest anchor for my aching senses; a sweet safe harbour that held me with warmth.

The storm raged too loudly to hear even thoughts, and I glimpsed at Lydia to see her state: she stared at me, a muffled laughter on her lips, eyes filled with a strange gleam. It all happened as if I were moved by someone else; her lips parted, and she made no motion to shove me away. I leaned a little closer, then a little more, and then my lips were pressed against her soft and half-open mouth. Her lips made no answer. Greatly scared I pulled back – what had I done? She was not angry, but I could not read her face. For a moment the joy had vanished from her eyes and her mouth, and she looked at me blankly. Then she stood up, bursting into a laughter swallowed soundless by the storm; a whirlpool of arcane fire behind her illuminated her fierce face. Her pale skin gleamed with whiteness in the dazzling lights which seemed to form a halo around her black hair. Her eyes were filled with a light of their own as she looked at me. She seemed to me as enigmatic and beauteous as a goddess, and I was filled with new wonder.

 _"_ _Come"_ Her lips shaped the word, and she pulled me up with a yank. Now I heard her laughter, even if only faintly. The storm around her brought to her some wildness akin to what I'd seen before Winterhold, only now void of evil.

" **OBLAAN JOORRE LIR.** " Morokei's hollow voice range and echoed in the rock walls, cold and hard like old iron.

" **NAHLOT** " Divayth returned, and their spells ceased.

From here on out the two turned to words, Morokei to Thu'um, and Divayth to a tongue I'd never yet heard. For a long while they argued; sometimes low and slow, doubtful words uttered in the bowels of the earth, and sometimes their discourse grew heated, loud voices booming in the cavern of earth – though whom they spoke to is not clear; I think not to one another, but rather trying to convince Nirn to cease the others existence. In the end, Divayth's arguments must have held truer – there was no spell, no voice, only the bang of metal and wood falling upon stone. Divayth had spoken Morokei out of Mundus into who knows where, the Dreamsleeve, Padomay, an unusual pocket-plane; nullified the 'one' that claimed Morokei to be, and now had become a round zero, and Morokei was no more.

It was all quiet suddenly. Lydia sprang into the hall, and I peeked after her from behind the boulder. Far on the platform the golden mask of Morokei lay still on the rags of his rotten robes. Divayth held a staff now in his hands, a rod of worn metal, bronze, splitting at the end into twigs and branches that held a blue orb within.

"Are your powers spent?" Savos huffed, running up to Divayth.

"Not quite my friend," he said, somewhat winded, "but he was not an easy match. Helenita! Come!"

Divayth gathered his strength while they waited for me. He leaned onto the staff, eyes shut, as if strained in thought. Savos smiled at me, nodding. "You did well. Are you hurt?"

"I'm alright, thanks to Lydia – I did not cast a spell."

"That is well," Savos said, "it was courageous to come this far."

I glimpsed at Lydia who kept herself at some distance, but she had visibly calmed down, and was only coolly eyeing the staff.

"I've never seen it in life before," Divayth then spoke at length. "But look. This little orb, is it a coincidence?"

"Looks akin to our discovery," Savos pondered.

"I can't identify its powers. Not yet, at least. But I feel there is enough of it, quite enough to be beyond the grasping of Morokei. Perhaps even mine. What these priests have once been not much remains but a mindless will, as if they were animated by the shadow of yore. He did not use the staff against us; else it might have fared ill. There might be none left in Nirn now who can bend the staff to their will. But we will try. And before we part from here, we must discuss our next move. I and Savos will likely return to the college, but I deem Helenita will not."

"What do you mean," I said alarmed.

"That night when we parted you to sleep, we did not sleep at all," Savos said, "but discussed long into dawn. There are some things of weight that must be considered. There have been Altmer's visiting Winterhold asking about a Breton sorceress. I sent them on their way empty handed that time, but we can't refuse Altmer consorts. And they will come about again, sooner or later. If you've been seen, someone will tip them, for you're no native. The Dominion stumbling into the college and winding up on our discovery now is something we aren't interested in. Besides, it will take some time before we are ready to make our first attempt of decrypting the orb."

"Where would you have me go, then?" I said, bewildered.

"I think…" Divayth said after a pause, "I think we need to part ways for some while. It is not clear to me how you are related to dragons, but that is no minor detail. You have not told us much, and we will not ask more. Our discovery and the re-appearance of dragons, if all that is said is true, may be coincidence – and yet it may not."

"The Greybeards did not leave me with much to work with, if that's what you mean."

"It may be so, but they are not the only ones in this world to hold dragon lore. Yet dragons are not my field of study. I do not sew the webs of time, but I have lived long enough to know that unseemly individuals, such as yourself, and world warping events don't occur one by one; they come together. To the degree of my wisdom, I measure we should divide our strength here. You may not need to study to find an answer – the world may just as well unfold itself to you, if you have patience to wait. Stranger things have happened in the past. When the time is right, you should come to Winterhold again."

The strange fact that Divayth had chosen almost the exact words said by Paarthurnax inexplicably calmed me. I remembered the dragons soft and mighty voice, easy and powerful like the roots of a mountain. "How will I know?"

"I cannot say, but I trust you will."

"Are you aware the Dominion might not have good intentions regarding me? What if I get caught?"

"I don't find danger there," Savos interjected. "Not yet. The time is not yet come for the dominion to wage open war on every front. Seizing individuals holding any office within the Empire is not yet without consequences."

Divayth thought for a while, and then took off one of his many rings. "I do not give this gift willingly, but if you find yourself in a dire need of aid, speak my name while wearing this ring and it will summon my simulacrum."

"I will trust in the wisdom of Divayth, then. And gladly I accept your gift."

* * *

 _The journey out from within the depths was not short, but of that part I will not write a word, for it was naught but long hours of black caverns and ancient hallways. The dead should rest where they are, and not be disturbed with touch or thought._


	11. Chapter 11

_Fie and shame to what part I now arrive; what I've become through this tremulous act that I must now with ink to you retell – it shudders me and runs shivers up my spine; But no more of this, should I dwindle any more with these doubts of mine – I could well wrap these parchments in pile, and send them over to the yearning maw of my household fire, which for one blink would bring me a heating pyre; and then, a failing warmth and invite home the winters sire._

We had come to clear and noon blazing skies, from 'neath the velvet depths of wakeful dreams; the pine spiced scent of winters air lit my lungs with hopeful pleas; I grasped her wrist, tried tugging her back, but only ended up pulling myself to her lap. She caught me and froze still, stared me blankly, hands halfway stuck as if prepared to shove me off, and I know not what took me; her eyes were stilled and soft and they were calling for me. I reached closer, trembling, and kissed her once more. She was startled, yet her lips wavered, and for a blink they responded. Then with a snap she became herself; she shoved me forcefully ahead, half playfully and half with spite; I weighed nothing to her, like a sprite, and stumbled half a dozen steps into knee-deep snow. With shooing gestures she beckoned me traverse the path between the pines, descending down the shining mountain slopes. The gloom on her face a little dimmed that bloom, but all the same, by those deep green pines in brisk winter noon it could not silence that hopeful joy woken in my heart.

We sauntered down to the tundra's in peace and quiet, leading our horses down the slopes (we had taken them with us for carriage, and had left them by the woods not far off), and I noted not how rigid she'd grown, until we came by an ailing autumn stream, by whom we'd breathe a while and from whose waters we'd fill our flasks. It was warm on the hay lain plains. The pond from where the brook was born had succumbed to the young winters grasp, for winter here seemed to exhale his first breathe as the equinox drew near. A frail hoary ice had covered the womb of that streaming water, and the clouds and the rays of sun danced on her frozen silver face. I drank from her, and at once felt my body invigorated; I blessed the stream, filled my flask and knelt down on a smooth stone by the pond, pouring water on the ice and wiping away the frosty sleeping dusts. The ice reflected the red in my locks; gleaming in the good sun, and it reflected the smile on my lips too, still locked in joy. The cool misty breathe lingered around the pond and all around me; Divines that the winter could be here already, and cover all these fields in white like it had those mountain tops, and that I could live here, in a wooden cottage built on some windless ridge up high on the mountain sides, from where by the hearth I could follow from my window the long white slopes rolling down to these silent plains that stretch all the way to the hills of Whiterun and to the river and the forests descending all the way from the Jerall range.

A sharp whistling sound broke the peace. A rock smashed against my new-made mirror, shattering it to smithereens and causing freezing water to jump on my face in a jet. I bolted up with a little screech, and right away met with Lydias storming eyes. She spoke not a word, glared at me for a while, and then broke away, pacing to and fro on the stone she stood. My heart was already pounding under the weight of anxious thoughts, and the silence soon made me tremble.

"Don't look at me with those dog's eyes, you –"She suddenly blurted, grew red in the face and turned the other way. Her shoulders were shuddering like leaves in a rising fall wind, and then she spun on her heels again, suddenly all calm, face like stone – but she was tensing all her muscles to hold those shivers; she was tight as a bow string drawn too far back. Her voice was deviously smooth and even, "Are you done combing your hair now, my lady? May we go on now?"

I was so afraid I couldn't speak; my dry tongue fumbled in vain for words, Mara forbid I had not even a thought in my head, I was all focused on the stirring tension in her, and what'd happen when she'd unleash that taut string from her fingers. Her hard hateful eyes captured me and bound me still, made my knees wobble with nauseating fear; dumb and weak I spoke back to her, my peeping voice dying away as her face grew even darker, "Sorry, I did not mean to… Is this about the… the… Ah…"

"The what?" she huffed, turned away from me and went on pacing. Her brows furrowed deeply; another word and her ire would whip me with mouthfuls of mire. Yes, her limbs trembled from the fury of a rising autumn storm, barely confined now in hard inward seams, creaking in their joints, if freed strong enough to devour me and my heart. And even as I saw this, I understood nothing, not with the bubbling stream soaring in my breast, not with my lips yet burning with the glowing remembrance of hers against mine; words sputtered from out my tongue like water drops falling upon barren soil, "You must know what I've felt towards you for… for some time now?"

She would not look at me, but eventually she hummed as if to agree, "Mhhm."

I did not know which way to be, how to stand, how to feel or how to speak and where to hold my hands and what with my fingers do, except snuggle the fold of my silken sleeve as my heart began bleeding with grief at her sullen silence. And she, with a soon cooling temper finally indulged me with words, less fierce, but still accusing, "This is not well my Thane, that you should put me in this situation. This is not well at all," she darted me with her flashing emerald eyes, "I can serve you out of oath, no, I must serve you. But more than that is not a part of that pact: to protect you with my life, no more, no less. Don't touch me. And don't look at me like that."

Bitter with all my slim hopes crumbling to dust I sputtered angrily more than I should have, much more than I even knew of, as if I'd blurted in desperation some fragment of a fantasy I'd not even admitted to myself, "A service you perform with apparent disdain, I think, and for very unjust reasons... Were I of your blood, tall, and white as snow and fierce as a blizzard, then would you grace me with your embrace, and Thane me no Thane, but call me as I plead, by my name and by my heart."

"Your wish, my Thane, is to those thoughts, and they are concerned with me much more than they should; I told you already. No." Her shoulders shuddered, and then her crossed arms flung apart, her ire lashing like a whip in her eyes, all her tightness unbound, leashing on me the arrow of her hate that struck me in my bleeding chest. "... But learn then what I sometimes thought; that you would never more dwell on those foolish hopes: I would, in time, did I not faster rid myself of you, lay you, and not with 'grace', but to disgrace, you, your beauty, and all that tempts me in your forms; and in your shame strand you and so forswear my oath, and then- Then..." She trailed off, losing her steam for breath and throwing her arms weakly into the air, "... Then only Talos knows what - hang myself in despair!" She sighed, and a part of her tautness seemed to diminish, "I dislike you, yes, Helenita, I hate you, if you want to know."

She glared at me, with victorious conceit did I think, as if impatient to witness me break, and that I did; her malice had in this lashing cloven me as with cold steel. And at the same time my heart was pierced with molten metal, caused my chest to throb from her words I'd never have expected. I just gaped at her, and the pain that lashed my mind in that shameful instant made me burst into tears. She had felt something towards me! And what was it?! Ugly and foul, full of sin – and yet, even in that regard nothing short of what I'd also shamefully dreamed of.

Sobbing and utterly wasted I staggered to my mare, clutched to her gentle fur and with eyes wholly blinded by tears in vain tried climbing on her, until she mercifully bent her knees so that I clumsily managed to mount my saddle. I looked where I thought Lydia would stand, mustering the last drops of strength in me to withhold my mourns and to speak with what dignity could yet be conceived, "Then forgive me my wrongs, though Nirn never asked me if I would like this be born, nor did chance encounter whom to make my maid by law. I never asked to be made any Thane, and with this, farewell, servant, and this cold country; Your prophecy in me is utterly spent. Farewell."

Wisely and with patience did my mare regard the clasping of my heels in her sides, for I saw not what was ahead of me, and had she cavorted into a gallop as was my direst wish, we would both have fallen off the side of rocks. Thus she first trotted slowly, clearing us off the stones and boulders in soil, and once upon solid tundra soil, brown and yellow and covered in hay, set on to a greater haste.

My impulse then was south; out of Skyrim and into home, plans greater than this I could not form. I'd forgotten about the dunmers, about the dragons, about everything in the whole world. The coming winters air dried my cheeks, and the whistling of the wind in my ears wound me in a void - I could hear but my thoughts, all else was wind and thudding hooves. The very first thing to form in my mind roused my tears anew, and gasping in pain that bent me in my saddle I grasped my breast, and with wet eyes beheld the scene - Could this be all? The tundra with its still silent beauty suffocating my breath with hurt, all I could attach to its beauty now was heartbreak. Yet I could not hate them, the vast plain soil, the cloud capped mountains rimmed with snow and the soothing mists lingering down their green pined slopes.

By that border where tundra turned to sloping green highlands, well after a hefty while of ride, the weakening wind brought me a distant sound, a faint sound, a guessing sound, but a sound which jolted me alive as it was the string that touched all my chords. I pressed my booted heels into Viennes flanks harder still, urging her to a warlike charge to rid me of my chasing fear, but that sweet, sly animal knew me much better than I myself, and blatantly disobeyed my wishes, ceasing her gallop into a sauntering trot. The yelling voice came again, now closer, now lucid, "Helenita...!", and so I sat in my saddle, back held straight and shivering with powerless rage, silly and helpless that my mare had so denied me. The thudding of her roan was right behind us, and in the next blink of an eye she steered in front of us, barring our way on our road. Princely was her posture, I must admit, and beauteous her boldness; but a bitter beauty, for my heart knew not for what to increase its beating pace, wrought with grief and anger and shame of rejection, all the while greatly smitten and drained of strength. She'd stripped her vestments that now laid spread behind her saddle, and she had a white shirt, though stained yet clear and bright. With a proud gaze she sought for mine, and despite all my anger I could not stand her eye. Maddened by my own meekness I stared to the ground, sullen and silent, so that I did not note the forceful rigidness of her movements, the tenseness unlike her outward calmness. She dismounted and came to me, placed her warm palm on my thigh. Upon her touch I grew frozen, all was halted in me, breath and blood, and with a pale glance I met her face, "Hear me Helenita, for where you must, you must, and that must - must in Skyrim be, and by Talos I'll not let you fly from that must nor from me." She drew breath, restless in eye, studying me what for a blink seemed in earnest sorry, and then spoke in a manner that was so removed from her, as if she'd memorized phrases higher folk uttered in the halls of Dragonsreach, "I beseech you my Thane, impute my words to the wayward youth and temper in me, I'm sworn to you on my life, and hold you dear, as would Baalgruf jarl of Whiterun were he here. I know not what more to say, only I can't let you go, so stay, and still bear with me; I'll hence be more myself, that I swear, my mildest Thane."

Suddenly she reached for my waist with both her arms and right tore me down; Vienne neighed and only lazily shifted her hoofing away from my kicking legs. She bound me in embrace and with her hand held me by nape and waist, fingers twixt my curls, lips grazing my ear with murmuring soothes, "Helenita... I'm calling you by name, not by Thane, Helenita, stay, let go - I'll still keep you safe."

My sobbing dwindled in her arms and in her warmth, and like a fool I crept closer, nestled in her bosom, breathing a cat-like breath on her neck, quick and short. "How wretched must I be to be cursed with such an arrogant mule like yourself, oh rash witted Lydia, insults do I hear, and easy claims over me made, but not a word of 'I am sorry'?"

With a sigh she released me and then in supplication bent on her knee, took my hand in both of hers, and looking upwards on me said, "Forgive me my Thane, that I spoke so harsh and unwise, of things less than your worth, forgive me and I shall forgive you your offense..."

She smiled, and I conjured it was an arrogant smile, how content she was for handling me with ease, and this sealed my breath with new and vain anger. I struck her in the face with my palm and with my knuckles, marking both her cheeks with a red of my ire. She gasped in pain, and stared at me dumbfound, and then quietly added, "I'll bear that this once, and now we must be even..."

"Not on my life," I groaned, "I spit on your conceit, and how fast you think me content. Pardon you? For loathing how I was born? Insist all you want with your honor and your childish pacts, but my task wills us close, did we want it or not, for I alone cannot go... You more than any should know how far beyond my courage this task lies, and without me not you nor none can go, as in my blood, to your great misfortune, the ending of this tale lies bound; so how can I stand the tumult of our bond, with such constant shed hate, both debase and profane? Am I not Dovah? Was Talos not of my blood as well? Was I not conceived by same spoke-bones of Lunar Lorkhan that conceived life, words and all?!"

Trembling with inward temper she rose to her feet, towering over me and spoke slow with a calm of great control, "Well then, my Thane, wisely do you plead in favor of our bond, and maybe I have wronged you indeed, in ways deeper than can here be overseen. A friend for you I can be in this need, but not more..."

Deeply I exhaled in frustration and cried foolish words, "Wherefore did you let me kiss you then?! You wanted it, I have seen it in your eyes!" And when she said nothing, and held her frowning silence, I pressed on, "To infuse me with a hope in vain? Which way must I be?! You confess, you deny; you charm, you desist; with one arm you keep me close, and with the other you debase: hark yourself, a moment ago you besmirch my name, and now you offer friendship? Tame my temper you may try - but such insolence cannot pass!"

"And tame you I will." She said with such brooding heaviness that I grew faint. A third smack I gave her cheek, as hard as I could, and turned on my heels and stormed into the woods, with no thought and no sight, save an image imprinted in my mind of her caressing her reddened cheek and with a strange look in her eyes.

 _Here I pause, for my fingers shake and are unable to hold the quill. For a while I've been staring at the paper, knowing not even why I write, but I need to, and for this I need to be drunk. Otherwise my mind will coy away, refusing even to remember the long hours of that dusk, though numerous times I've in secret thought of them. It is all too shameful to face or to recount._

For foolish me to think her with that subdued, as all too soon I heard her running in chase, and she without robes caught me in place, arms like iron coils curbing my writhing. Silently we struggled for a short moment, until I felt it in her heavy arms, in that impossible strength that gave me no chance. The heat of her muscles radiated with it; her arms were not restraining me – they were possessing me. And with that thought and in that realization a wave of heat struck me with force, an unrestrained lust drenched in shame, remembering her words; that I was a stray cattle and she a beast of prey, and so seizing me, a helpless lamb, had reign to do with me what she'd please, where none could hear or intervene - the unbearable, immeasurable shame of it, and the limb shaking, enslaving lust! Was it so, was I right? Shaking, I turned to her in that tight embrace, and grew so afraid, for I recognized her no more. Her eyes were dilated, their emerald almost vanished under the glimmering pupils of frightful weight and covered by a slumberous glow, her mouth was parted as if to speak, but all in her was rigid and still – Had I just not urged her with words, 'tame me you may try?' With a yelp I broke away from her, running, and she came after, and soon my feet stumbled, drained from their blood, and with faltering knees I looked behind me. All fierce want to the boot she was as she came for me, dispersing mists and shadows of the wood with her gait, as if she were of fire, bending my will against her face with some ancient spells that roused all deep brooked springs; the wind made way, the living creatures all turned away, her eyes burned with dark flames and made me sway – no human but beast, there shivering with rending flame she became a death of languages and tongues, a death of all vain words; her piercing dark eyes lanced me, put and bound me to the soil; a plucked dove pinned in the loam. And as I stood there ogling at her she sprinted and ran me down, gripping me once more. Desperately I tried wrenching myself from her again, but she would not have me go, and in the small wrestle that ensued my feet slipped on a root in the soil, and then hers slipped too, and we fell onto a mattress of leaves and moss, she on top, me underneath. Thus then, arms on her shoulders as if readied to push, though quite powerless for that, and a great storm of feelings spurring in my chest I waited with a tremulous breath, what would she say or do - what could I else?

The quietness around us was ominous and dreadful. There was only our breathing, and even the little sounds of nature all were gone; the crickets in the grass, the gentle wind swaying the ferns and the boughs of pine. Her heat was something I'd never felt from any other human, hot enough to burn my skin. All my mind was bent on her closeness. The swelling and sinking of her chest was far faster than it should; we had ran most some dozen feet, but her panting told of some miles, and every one of her heavy inhales pressed her breasts against me hard, and through our flesh so closely joint with only some fabric in between I sensed the pounding of her heart, for it was like a hammering at an anvil, fast and hard, just like mine. She shifted her weight once, so heavy, and still not burdening, as if to stand up, but merely pinning me better against the soil. Her slumberous eyes were wrought with a heaviness that right penetrated me with dull pain. Her voice had become thin and husky, almost failing in her throat, "Are you alright?"

One weak word I managed, chimed with a part broken moan, "No…"

Her lips parted, moved in would-be speech, as with no sound; words had gone from her completely.

I couldn't hold myself any longer. Scared witless of her heaviness and foreboding silence I made one final effort of pushing her off me, and in that instant her arms slipped under my back and she pressed me down with all her might, sealing my breath with her mouth, pushing my head hard into the soil. Her lips were so soft but her kissing hard, and as she kissed me again and again, fully and with no bounds like an unshackled woodlands beast, so did my body at first return her with as eager submissiveness as became her fierceness.

"Stop!" I screamed when I had a breathe, but she would no longer understand, her hands were clawing me everywhere, and all my efforts of pushing her away were hopeless. We rolled on the grass, and soon she'd torn my robes, torn my shift, and her hard hands were gripping my naked skin. I fell limp, senseless and unable to breathe, the thought of what was happening just shut life from my mind, her words now ringing in my head like gargantuan bells in an empty church. And yet as her lips covered mine, and as her hips forced their way between my thighs, my body would come back to life; my lips would part and kiss her back, my waist would tremble weakly and buck against her. From there it all became only a dreamy blur, all I remember is that soon we lied on my broken robes spread on the soil, stark naked and locked in a maddening embrace, all our flesh greedily glued into one. Her heat was all unleashed on me, for the dusk was cold and still we were drenched in sweat. My flesh yielded to her roughness on its own, and even as I thought I'd pass out in horror some force would keep me awake. I could only look at her, only follow what my own body was doing without any power to sway it. She'd claw my softest places, where her hands sunk into my flesh, claw me until I bled; everywhere I felt her hungering touch, the hardness of her frame and the tautness of her tensed muscles, bulging from the efforts of trying to devour all of me at once, and everywhere the softness of my flesh yielding to her hardness; it sent me into a dark ecstasy of which I long hated myself and my betraying body – I felt like a lowly piece of meat, all that shapes my form subjected to the most primal of human desires, reduced to nothing but flesh and lust, so mercilessly launched upon me that I had no choice but to obey and to give in, for despite all the fear and the lump of agony in my chest that wanted to come screaming out, my body would be in a bliss that made me whimper and moan and helplessly return her embrace as if I wanted nothing more – arms around her back and legs wrapped around her hips. She'd bite as if she wanted to eat me, but I did not feel the pain, only taste my own blood on her tongue.

Even now I can't bring myself to write of all that she did, for she defiled my body, but with trembling fingers unwilling to admit I need also say, to defend myself and perhaps her, that it was not all one sided. She forced me, and yet I instantly gave in. Too easily; I remember too well the constant ecstasy of my blood even as she hurt me.

The sun had almost sunken below the horizon when she had gotten all that she wanted from me, once my body had given it all without a fight. She laid on top of me, panting heavily against my shoulder, her hand still holding my breast, all our skin slippery with musky sweat. Then my mind was truly broken, I was unable to form a word, even emotion. I felt nothing but heat and cold; Lydia, and the cool wind now caressing our cooling bodies. Slowly she stood up, and began dressing. Calmly she strapped her vestments and tied her belts. Mindlessly I did as she, tying myself in the torn robes as best I could. With its sash I managed to somehow tie it up. She went back to her horse, not giving me a single look, and I followed as if on a leash. We rode slowly and wordlessly into the night, up the bending road running by the river that descends down to Whiterun.

* * *

 _(Hastily writing all of this, I return and re-read what I've put down, and feel as if there is some correction to make, yet I know not where. I was horrified of her, yes, but yet what follows does not read like so, not to any significant extent anyway. It seems inconsistent, in a way, and so I could conclude that I had learned much more from her, through her body, than I myself at the time understood. For ever after that evening strange thoughts began appearing in my head, and I seemed to suddenly know her closely though she had at no point parted with a secret of hers. Not 'knowing' in the typical sense perhaps, for I still knew nothing of her own story, but I was less afraid, as if her outburst had revealed the worst of her and so ended those fears - nothing worse could come. She grew weaker in my eyes, and I perhaps stronger. It is apparent now (much later), that I forgave her before I ever even thought of forgiving her, and that the violence she'd used on me I slowly returned (it seems to me now) in tenderness aimed at her own (not so visible) remorse. However these are but stray scribbles out of place (and time), and none of this would fully occur to me in many, many nights. And yet, somehow, it already had. And now let me close this parenthesis, and apologize for being incoherent.)_

Bit by bit, thought returned to me. Stray words, but my heart remained empty, void of fear and pain, yes, but of everything else as well. I thought upon the words she'd spoken to me by the little pond. Hate and lust. She'd done both – were she to run off now? She seemed cold and calm, yet faintly I understood that a great struggle must have been set in motion inside her, but whether I'd ever learn any of it, I didn't know.

So we rode, until at last, in the middle of the night, we reached a small town by the name of Riverwood, resting in a green valley between Hrothgar and another mountain of less renown by the upstream of the river. Curiously enough the lamps were lit in their posts, and a merry banter came from within the inn. Its windows were glowing with warm light.

We had not agreed on anything; where we were going, where we were going to rest, and were we even together anymore? Yet in a wordless agreement we stabled our horses by the inn, and there our eyes briefly met in the darkness of the shed. She was just Lydia, I thought. Weary and wretched did she seem, too weary to dwell on any thought, much like me. Perhaps even that brief glimpse returned to me some faint life. She beckoned towards the inn, and we went.

The inn was full of guests, full to the brim with laughter and singing and merry drunken clamor. Every table and chair was taken at the sides, and even the hall was full of standing guests, drinking, talking, and some clapping their hands to a music that came from some corner too crowded to be seen.

All ragged and foiled we waded slowly through the crowd. The light and the laughter comforted me, for though I've always hated crowds, that life calmed my mortified heart. Perhaps people looked at us and whispered behind our backs, but I was too tired to care of it.

The barkeep glanced at us over the counter, aggravated that yet another pair of customers had the right to demand her attention and add to her frenzy of hurry.

"Wait there, I'll be back shortly," she said, and disappeared into the crowd carrying a platter loaded with pints.

We both stood there awkwardly in our coats and with our bearings, our personal struggles suddenly feeling a bit menial amid that loud merry crowd. "What's all this, Lydia…?" I leaned on her, whispering.

She gave me a baffled look, "Maybe someone got married, that's my best bet."

"What a timing we have… I've never seen this many people in a countryside inn."

"Now then…" The innkeeper huffed, suddenly back from the throng, folding up her sleeves and wiping a droplet of sweat from her brows, "…What can I get you ladies?" And before either of us could speak, she quickly added with a worry in her eyes, "And don't say you're looking to be lodged."

"Well, we are coming from beyond Whiterun today, we have to sleep somewhere," I started arguing, already fearing the worst.

"Fine," she sighed, "fine…"

She turned on her heels and went to a man wiping mugs with a towel further behind the counter, her voice lost in the clamour and her finger pointing at us. In a second she came back, placing her fists firmly on the counter, "So here's the deal, we're all out of rooms, but there is a shed we use during midsummer festivities. It's freezing cold now, but there is a bed with fur blankets…" She briefly regarded Lydias ranger-like garments and her weather worn countenance, "Maybe you'll manage. I'm sorry, but that's all we have."

I exchanged an anxious look with Lydia, already fumbling for the small purse by my belt as she gave me a tiny nod, "How much?"

"Ten drakes for the both of you," she replied hesitantly and hid away the coins I placed on her palm. "Go out towards the mill, and the door will be on your left."

And in a blink she had vanished again. I sighed, feeling very weary, and looked up to Lydia tilting her brows towards the door. She nudged my shoulder and I followed after into the cold night air. We stumbled in the dark looking for the door until my hand found a wooden handle, "Is it this one…?" I whispered.

Lydia came behind me and gently pushed the creaking door open, "Light it with a spell."

I did as ordered, letting out a small firefly flying into the shed. It had a soil floor and a pile of logs piled on one wall, and a single bed on the other and that was all. Lydia thrust me inside and closed the door, setting the little latch in place. The chatter and laughter of the guests echoed from the inn, quiet and distant. Our breathing filled the silence, and soon as the sudden stillness and dimness of the shed settled in on me I began hearing the sounds of crickets and the soft flow of the river too, wrapping me in a calm unlike the tumults of the day. I exhaled deeply and almost felt like smiling, only now aware how tense my shoulders had been for likely hours now; I felt like I had just been relieved of a heavy rug-sack I'd carried all the way from Whiterun. I turned to her a bit more bravely to see if she shared any of this peace, but she was already half naked, working on her leggings and her boots, cursing the knots that were resisting her fingers attempting to loosen them in the flickering light I had conjured. Even in the weak light I could see a dark line crossing her back, and I shunned myself for having forgotten about her pains; so well had she concealed any that she'd had.

"What are you looking at?" She retorted, getting angrier as I watched her battling with her boots before she eventually managed to kick them off her feet, all her movements accompanied by a certain forceful frustration. She straightened up and looked at me like I was dumb.

"What of your back?" I whispered.

"What?"

I reached for her, and for the first time she wouldn't flinch from my touch, "You never let me look at it properly, have you not had any pains?"

"Some," she said, strung. Her bare skin ran on shivers, and I thought to feel her muscles grow tense as I laid my fingers on her. "It's alright, been getting better. Would you even care, now?"

"Yes," I whispered, flushed. _'Now'_ , was that an apology? "I do."

We stood there awkwardly for a while, and suddenly she pulled me close, breathing heavily. Her palms laid on me lightly, but her touch was light only through great effort, for her arms were elsewhere like iron. She sighed, and the hardness left her.

She undressed me and pushed me into the bed, pulling the furs over us. Both our bone-bitten bodies at once found one another like a magnet and a lodestone. Her arms clasped my back, pulling me closer until those rampant shivers died down. A heat pierced my body as I nestled in her bosom, hiding my face in her neck, for a moment just trying to fathom that we really were huddled like so once more. She turned me around quite harshly and spooned me against the wall to find more space of herself. I suffered her roughness without grudges, one part of me sinking into a strange rapture when I simply had her closeness, right there and then as we were like two lowly women escaping the nightfall. The other, a gnawing doubt and waking fear; to sleep like this in her arms, to feel the touch of her naked skin was something I'd dreamed of before, but now it was too much. All my thoughts sprung into life, returning to her words over and over again. She'd said she would do _that_ to me, and then leave, and she had not, not yet anyway. Every moment she'd tarry with me was in discord with her words, and I feared the night and sleep and what it would bring, and the morning and all the mornings after that, and whether we could look each other in the eyes.

But it must not have been easier for her. For I thought then to have finally understood the two prominent sides of Lydia as I had already partly perceived on our way to Shalidor - that had been a mere inkling, but now I was certain. These strange thoughts I harbored in her arms there and then: At first when I'd learned (a little) to know Lydia, I'd thought there to be but these two sides altogether; one filled with anger and grief from the past, and a wildness untamed, the other filled with fear and confusion. But now I understood it was not so. Both of these sides were one, and this was her weak part. And it had perhaps for many years already clutched her stronger heart. It was fear that shaped her so, veiled in wrath and fire. But her other side was I think far older, and stronger in some sense, a deep strength that came not from her rashness and which was capable of softness and gentleness, only revealed here and there for a blink as if a shimmer of light peeking through a shroud of blackness, and there was a great scar between these two. I feared that she could be lost, bent under the weight of that fear for the rest of her life, and that presently she'd yield to some hot flood of her fiery blood; abandoning me or doing Divines only know what to rid herself of me.

For despite all the heat shrouding me, a terrible shiver ran across my body as my thoughts touched the memory of yesterday's woodland dusk. That hurt and grief wouldn't cease for a long time, for she had violated me deep, forced her way where only love should be welcome. Yet in spite of that sadness and everything else stinging my heart, I pitied her, and my desire to mend her was somehow strengthened in me.

The touch of her hand on my skin flinched me from those thoughts, for her fingers were still icy. "Cold…" I whimpered.

"Sorry…" Came her whisper as she carefully placed her hand between my breasts, curled into a fist.

Instinctively I covered her hand with both of mine and held her tensed arm with a tenderness that made me blush. It was so still and quiet. Her breathing remained even, but heavy. I wouldn't sleep before I heard her snoring, and the longer that quiet continued the more I started realizing the darkness in the shed was pregnant with just that, the silence between us, which we both thought upon and wanted to break with words, but there were none. She wouldn't fall asleep. My heart began beating faster, and with a thin voice I whispered an age old dumb question, "Are you sleeping yet?"

Her only response was an exhale heavier than the last, the hot air from her mouth washing over my neck like the ocean wave gracing the seaside sands, and setting my skin on violent shivers. I felt her fist loosening and opening like the bud of a rose, and gently shifting her hand grabbed my breast, lightly pressing it with her soft palm, rousing a shy stiffness. Her sudden initiative caused a little gasp to escape from my lips, which gave her immediate confidence; her touch turned firmer, her hips pressed against my rear with brooding intents, her muscular thigh sliding over my legs; all the sensation of her warmth softly sieging me closer and closer so frightening and vexing and welcomed all at once that I lost my breath and had to bite my lips hard to not scream aloud the agonizing clump of emotion roiling in me. Her muteness now brought flashes of images of her wearing that almost foreign face in the woods, and I dreaded to see her face now, if the same spell was there again… My chest was about to explode when I squeezed her arm as hard as I could for her to stop, and soon she let out a gasp of pain and ceased her motions. At that the thudding of my heart stopped pounding in my ears and the darkness gave in, easing its grip of me. We both breathed heavily for a while before I breached the thick air with a broken voice, "Please Lydia, don't hurt me…"

There was a pause, and then she gave my neck a kiss, "I'm sorry…"

I said nothing, only sighing as the clasp of hysteria a little declined, dispelled by the kiss that reminded me I was with a human and not a beast from the nether I could not control nor understand. And with that wave of relaxation I gained back awareness of this world, of my hands that still held hers in place, but now utterly powerless. My fingers fell limp with a weakness as I finally realized how hard my breast had grown in her palm, and even as I lay there in confusion, she seconded her attempt. She dragged her teeth across my skin, biting lightly the side of my neck and then my shoulder, "I'm sorry," she repeated, climbing on top of me. And then her lips were on mine, and it all happened again. Her touch was softer than it had been, the sharpness of her lust blunted, yet terrible and burning hot. I had no strength to repel her, and more than I dared admit my own body welcomed her, growing soft, moaning under her, very eagerly remembering its ecstasy, gleaming intense like never before in my life. It'd faster be over this way, and soft-silencing my mind I encouraged her with a voice frail from excitement, uttered in her ear the two breathtakingly arousing words I'd only ever spoken in my fantasies, "Take me…"

* * *

A dreary morning light filled the shack. Her arms were yet wound around my waist, her black hair flowing down her shoulder onto my breast. There I laid for a long, dim hour as she slept. Footsteps and doors creaking somewhere outside in the village woke her; and her eyes were full of that same misty light. A dawn dimmed in clouds, but yet a dawn. There was no outburst as I had feared, no rashness. She looked at me for a while as if she wanted to speak, but said nothing and got up, starting to get dressed. I observed her carefully, and what I saw warmed my heart, for I thought her wordlessness was nothing but her tongue failing her, for that was not her strength. Instead, she dictated her mood in her motions and intentions. Quiet and easy; it was her hands and her eyes that communicated – she'd turn to me as I made no effort of getting up, took me by the shoulders and very gently pulled me to the side of the bed, and with a touch as soft as a mothers helped me get ready. It was her way of asking forgiveness, perhaps – but what she otherwise thought of me had doubtless not changed much.

She pulled me with her as she went outside to sit on the grass by the river, breathing deeply the cool morning air. "Sit now with me," she said, "we need to think – or decide - where next."

"What do you mean," I muttered.

"That I'm not letting you go on your own paths, as I have always said. What else I have said, don't you say a word on that. Later, yes, perhaps, we can have more words. But I would have you forget them for now, if not forever, as well as..."

She cleared her throat and said nothing more. She was thoroughly red in the face, as was I, but it was her who was more timid. Stock-still she gazed at the flowing water with a nervous persistence, for she surely felt my eyes on her but would not look back.

"I have no notion of what is expected of me," I spoke quietly.

"But you do. Helenita, this is, if you will, a story as you've heard told by fireside hours. We are in one, that is, if you know what I mean."

"I don't."

She sighed, "As you hear such a tale, do you think the heroes of old knew at all times what they were doing, or what they would do after? Time is complicated, it has many directions, it goes this way and that way at once, but when we look at a segment of it, long gone, it has only a beginning and an end..."

I looked closely at Lydia, part amused and yet greatly surprised, "I didn't know you were a philosopher."

"Don't mock me," she said, turning even more red, "What I mean is that passed moments in time no longer have crossroads. Those stories seem sound and as if 'built', like a house is built, if you know what I mean. But it was for those heroes as it is for us now. You say you don't know anything. They didn't either. So you are wrong. You know that you must, and that is enough. "

I smiled at her, "Yes, Lydia, there is wisdom in that. But I haven't the faintest idea now apart from waiting for something to come to me."

"Then that is what we must. But think more. Who could tell us more about the dragons?"

"If there are any scholars who know of them apart the Greybeards, I'm not aware. Perhaps in the empire there might be some such lore-masters left, and yet I don't think they could tell us more than what we know already from Paarthurnax."

"At any rate we should move. I was too tired last night to care of it, and said no words to you, but someone is keeping an eye on us here."

"What – where?" I said, looking about, half expecting some cloaked figure to stand prying on us.

"A Breton if I saw right. She's nowhere to be seen now, but I have inkling we'll be followed."

"Then it won't be the dominion. Whatever she is after, I don't want to know. Since I know of nothing else, I'd like to return to Winterhold, but not by Whiterun. I don't want to bump into anyone who might know us there. And any route longer than that should take us time enough."

"So be it then. We can head west and try to make our way to Solitude and then return to Winterhold by the coastline. At least, if nothing happens on the way, that is. But let's get going now for starters."


End file.
